Re: Imap Problem

[Mats Lidell <Mats.Lidell@contactor.se>]

>>>>> Jake wrote:

Jake> There are enough of use with this problem that you'd think
Jake> someone, somewhere would try to run it down.  I'd try to look
Jake> into but I have no idea where to begin.

Start by applying this patch to imap.el, or just add the message line,
and verify that you get the same behavior as I do. Then we know it is
the same problem.

*** imap.el	Fri Jun  1 17:02:46 2001
--- imap.el.~1~	Thu Jan  4 06:16:06 2001
***************
*** 1830,1836 ****
  
  (defun imap-parse-greeting ()
    "Parse a IMAP greeting."
-   (message (concat "Looking for IMAP greeting in " (buffer-name))) ;;; XXX
    (cond ((looking-at "\\* OK ")
  	 (setq imap-state 'nonauth))
  	((looking-at "\\* PREAUTH ")
--- 1830,1835 ----

Jake> In case this helps, since upgrading to 21.4.3 and the latest
Jake> packages, I can make this happen consistently if I just do the
Jake> following:

I have had this a long time with different version of XEmacs and it is
present both on NT and on Linux.

Jake> 1) Start XEmacs.
Jake> 2) C-x f .emacs
Jake> 2) C-x 5 b
Jake> 3) M-x gnus in the new frame

With the patch applied my guess is that you will in the Message buffer
se one line that reads: 
  "Looking for IMAP greeting in  *nnimap* <your-server>"
followed by a number of lines: (Depending on how fast to hit C-G to
break the loop)
  "Looking for IMAP greeting in *Group* <your-server>"

What is going on you might ask? (And if I could tell you the whole
store we would probably have solved the question.) 

The short answer is that imap is waiting for the authorisation reply
from the server and when it looks in the process buffer the first time
the reply hasn't arrived yet. So it loops and comes back again only
now to be looking-at in the wrong buffer. Since the *Group* buffer
isn't known to contain an IMAP authorisation message the test will
fail etc.

This is a excerpt from the Message log when I just successfully
managed to connect (by using the M-x gnus-in-a-single-frame-method as
outlined earlier.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
imap: Connecting to localhost...
Looking for IMAP greeting in  *nnimap* contactor
Looking for IMAP greeting in  *nnimap* contactor
Waiting for response from localhost...done
imap: Connecting to localhost...done
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Notice that this time we had to look twice in the process buffer to
find the reply and that both times we looked in the process
buffer. That's nice and how it should be. 

This also could explain why it works sometimes. With a fast
IMAP-server or a slow XEmacs the reply could arrive so that it is in
the process buffer when we look into it the first time.

OK. To be complete. Here is how it looks when it failes.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
imap: Connecting to localhost...
Looking for IMAP greeting in  *nnimap* contactor
Looking for IMAP greeting in *Group*
Looking for IMAP greeting in *Group*
imap: Connecting to localhost...failed
----------------------------------------------------------------------

This is what I describe above but it is probably easier to understand
when you see it.

Yours
-- 
%% Mats
PS. I really don't know anything about the internal behavior of XEmacs
process buffers so there might be other reasons for what we are
seeing. The consequences remains the same though. DS.