Mail source problem (?)

Mail source problem (?)

[Jeremy Hankins]

Recently (after an update to emacs about a month ago, debian unstable) I
started getting a message when checking mail about a mail source error:

Mail source (file :path /var/mail/nowan) error (Searching for program). Continue? (yes or no)

This is apparently from my secondary select method meant to pull in
localhost mail, and it doesn't seem to be anything obvious like a
permissions problem.  It doesn't make any difference whether I respond
yes or no, either way mail out of /var/mail is ignored and the rest of
my mail is fetched successfully.

It's clearly some sort of compatibility issue and I figured I needed to
sort through my gnus file and figure out where it was coming from --
annoying but no big deal.  And since it's only a small minority of my
mail affected it hasn't bugged me enough to pursue it till now.

But the annoying thing, apart from the fact that the error is a bit
obscure (what program?), is that if I turn debug-on-quit on so as to
figure out where the bug is being triggered and why, the message goes
away removing my chance to trigger the debugger.

Any ideas either a) what the problem fetching local mail is, or b) why
debug-on-quit makes the message go away?

-- 
Jeremy Hankins <nowan@nowan.org>

Re: Mail source problem (?)

[Eric Abrahamsen]

Jeremy Hankins <nowan@nowan.org> writes:

> Recently (after an update to emacs about a month ago, debian unstable) I
> started getting a message when checking mail about a mail source error:
>
> Mail source (file :path /var/mail/nowan) error (Searching for program). Continue? (yes or no)
>
> This is apparently from my secondary select method meant to pull in
> localhost mail, and it doesn't seem to be anything obvious like a
> permissions problem.  It doesn't make any difference whether I respond
> yes or no, either way mail out of /var/mail is ignored and the rest of
> my mail is fetched successfully.
>
> It's clearly some sort of compatibility issue and I figured I needed to
> sort through my gnus file and figure out where it was coming from --
> annoying but no big deal.  And since it's only a small minority of my
> mail affected it hasn't bugged me enough to pursue it till now.
>
> But the annoying thing, apart from the fact that the error is a bit
> obscure (what program?), is that if I turn debug-on-quit on so as to
> figure out where the bug is being triggered and why, the message goes
> away removing my chance to trigger the debugger.
>
> Any ideas either a) what the problem fetching local mail is, or b) why
> debug-on-quit makes the message go away?

Are you sure it isn't `debug-on-error' you want? Unless you're getting a
hang when checking mail, and then trying to C-g out of the hang, you
won't trigger `debug-on-quit'. Maybe try the former?

Eric

Re: Mail source problem (?)

[Jeremy Hankins]

Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> writes:
> Jeremy Hankins <nowan@nowan.org> writes:
>
>> Recently (after an update to emacs about a month ago, debian unstable) I
>> started getting a message when checking mail about a mail source error:
>>
>> Mail source (file :path /var/mail/nowan) error (Searching for program). Continue? (yes or no)
>>
>> This is apparently from my secondary select method meant to pull in
>> localhost mail, and it doesn't seem to be anything obvious like a
>> permissions problem.  It doesn't make any difference whether I respond
>> yes or no, either way mail out of /var/mail is ignored and the rest of
>> my mail is fetched successfully.
>>
>> It's clearly some sort of compatibility issue and I figured I needed to
>> sort through my gnus file and figure out where it was coming from --
>> annoying but no big deal.  And since it's only a small minority of my
>> mail affected it hasn't bugged me enough to pursue it till now.
>>
>> But the annoying thing, apart from the fact that the error is a bit
>> obscure (what program?), is that if I turn debug-on-quit on so as to
>> figure out where the bug is being triggered and why, the message goes
>> away removing my chance to trigger the debugger.
>>
>> Any ideas either a) what the problem fetching local mail is, or b) why
>> debug-on-quit makes the message go away?
>
> Are you sure it isn't `debug-on-error' you want? Unless you're getting a
> hang when checking mail, and then trying to C-g out of the hang, you
> won't trigger `debug-on-quit'. Maybe try the former?

I tried that but it doesn't trigger debug-on-error, it's just a prompt
that pops up in the minibuffer.  Normally, I'd wait for the message to
pop up and hit C-G, triggering the debugger.  But with debug-on-quit
toggled on, the message never shows up and gnus silently fails to load
mail from that source.  There is mail in the mail spool, and I also
tried deleting and recreating the spool in case something was corrupted
and causing gnus to choke.

-- 
Jeremy Hankins <nowan@nowan.org>

Re: Mail source problem (?)

[Jeremy Hankins]

Just did a bit more looking around and happened to check the messages
buffer, and it turns out there was a more complete error message there.
The problem was movemail.  mail-source-movemail-program wasn't set, and
the default value mail-source.el was looking in exec-directory, which
didn't have it.  Setting the variable manually to "/usr/bin/movemail"
solved the problem loading mail from my mail spool.  Doesn't explain why
toggling debug-on-quit made the message go away, of course.

Is this a packaging problem?  Should I file a bug with debian?  Or
should mail-source.el check the path for movemail?

-- 
Jeremy Hankins <nowan@nowan.org>

Re: Mail source problem (?)

[Eric Abrahamsen]

Jeremy Hankins <nowan@nowan.org> writes:

> Just did a bit more looking around and happened to check the messages
> buffer, and it turns out there was a more complete error message there.
> The problem was movemail.  mail-source-movemail-program wasn't set, and
> the default value mail-source.el was looking in exec-directory, which
> didn't have it.  Setting the variable manually to "/usr/bin/movemail"
> solved the problem loading mail from my mail spool.  Doesn't explain why
> toggling debug-on-quit made the message go away, of course.
>
> Is this a packaging problem?  Should I file a bug with debian?  Or
> should mail-source.el check the path for movemail?

There was a long discussion about this here:
https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=31737

Can you take a look at that and see if/how it's relevant to your issue?

Re: Mail source problem (?)

[Jeremy Hankins]

Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> writes:
> Jeremy Hankins <nowan@nowan.org> writes:
>
>> Just did a bit more looking around and happened to check the messages
>> buffer, and it turns out there was a more complete error message there.
>> The problem was movemail.  mail-source-movemail-program wasn't set, and
>> the default value mail-source.el was looking in exec-directory, which
>> didn't have it.  Setting the variable manually to "/usr/bin/movemail"
>> solved the problem loading mail from my mail spool.  Doesn't explain why
>> toggling debug-on-quit made the message go away, of course.
>>
>> Is this a packaging problem?  Should I file a bug with debian?  Or
>> should mail-source.el check the path for movemail?
>
> There was a long discussion about this here:
> https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=31737
>
> Can you take a look at that and see if/how it's relevant to your issue?

Yes, apart from the debugging problems I was having that's the same
issue.

-- 
Jeremy Hankins <nowan@nowan.org>

Re: Mail source problem (?)

[Eric Abrahamsen]

Jeremy Hankins <nowan@nowan.org> writes:

> Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> writes:
>> Jeremy Hankins <nowan@nowan.org> writes:
>>
>>> Just did a bit more looking around and happened to check the messages
>>> buffer, and it turns out there was a more complete error message there.
>>> The problem was movemail.  mail-source-movemail-program wasn't set, and
>>> the default value mail-source.el was looking in exec-directory, which
>>> didn't have it.  Setting the variable manually to "/usr/bin/movemail"
>>> solved the problem loading mail from my mail spool.  Doesn't explain why
>>> toggling debug-on-quit made the message go away, of course.
>>>
>>> Is this a packaging problem?  Should I file a bug with debian?  Or
>>> should mail-source.el check the path for movemail?
>>
>> There was a long discussion about this here:
>> https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=31737
>>
>> Can you take a look at that and see if/how it's relevant to your issue?
>
> Yes, apart from the debugging problems I was having that's the same
> issue.

I think the solution is just to set mail-source-movemail-program
explicitly to the string "movemail", until you've got a newer emacs that
does that by default.