gnus + imap - ssl.el = BAD

gnus + imap - ssl.el = BAD

[Seth Delackner]

I originally posted this yesterday in comp.emacs, but this is probably
the better spot to rant about it.

In all the google archives I couldn't find even the barest mention of
the thing that made me stay up al night hitting my head against the
wall:

gnus needs w3's ssl.el library for imap to properly function using an
ssl stream.  None of the #$% error logs or messages even hint that it
wants ssl.el.


Now, a question:

I'm sharing my .newsrc, .newsrc.eld, News, and so on between two
machines.  When I finally got the second machine's gnus to work by
installing ssl.el, I was so happy I immediately exited gnus, only to
see it rewrite my entire .newsrc.eld file for over a minute.  At the
end I diffed them and it had indeed changed quite a lot.

How do I avoid this in the future?

Re: gnus + imap - ssl.el = BAD

[those who know me have no need of my name]

<u1qb3dg2.fsf@jtan.com> divulged:

>gnus needs w3's ssl.el library for imap to properly function using an
>ssl stream.  None of the #$% error logs or messages even hint that it
>wants ssl.el.

what error messages did you get?

gnus has many dependencies, among them url and w3.  in the documentation
[for gnus 5.8.8] for `nntp-open-ssl-stream' it says ...

          Opens a connection to a server over a "secure" channel.  To
          use this you must have SSLay installed
          (`ftp://ftp.psy.uq.oz.au/pub/Crypto/SSL', and you also need
          `ssl.el' (from the W3 distributeion, for instance).  You then
          define a server as follows:

unfortunately the documentation doesn't make it clear that all ssl
connections make use of ssl.el, which requires ssleay (or openssl).

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Re: gnus + imap - ssl.el = BAD

[those who know me have no need of my name]

<zo031c2s.fsf@jtan.com> divulged:

>With an imap secondary select mode, The imap error when ssl.el is
>missing is simply "Denied server", which suggests that .authinfo was
>incorrect or perhaps that the client and server could not negotiate a
>mutually understood auth method (cram-md5, login, etc).
>
>I haven't looked at the lisp yet, but imap-open should, when ssl is
>specified as the stream type, check that ssl is actually installed,

good analysis.  i suggest submitting a bug report, and if you have the time
and inclination a patch too, using (gnus-bug).

>Now if I could just get w3 to break lines the way every other text
>mode browser I use does... (as in, "directory" listings spewed out on
>one line).

i haven't been happy with w3 either.  emacs-w3m is better, except in one or
two respects where it's worse, but it's different and might be just what
you need.

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bringing you boring signatures for 17 years