lost nnimap

[David Carlton]

At work, I use Gnus to read mail from various sources.  My primary
method is nnml, reading both from the local spool and from IMAP server
A (using ssl); I also have nnimap as a secondary method, allowing me
to browse IMAP server B (using shell, specifically ssh).

Recently, I exited XEmacs for the first time in a while; now, I can't
get to my nnimap mail any more. :-( Gnus is completely unwilling to
open the relevant folder.

I'm trying to figure out what changed.  I only recently added the IMAP
to server A; I tentatively think that that might have something to do
with this.  Some pieces of evidence that might be relevant:

* I tried using the debugger to figure out what's going on.  It looked
  like the variable 'imap-shell-program' was nil, and that's
  consistent with my not seeing any attempt whatsoever to connect to
  the host.  When I set it to what its default value should have been,
  it did manage to successfully connect, but something went wrong
  later.  I didn't spend too much time tracking down the next failure
  cause - I figured that, if imap-shell-program had gone wrong
  somehow, all sorts of things could be screwed up.

* I tried commenting out the nnml/imap part of my .gnus file, and
  things got a lot farther.  With both turned on, the relevant part of
  my *Message Log* is:

Reading active file from mail.bactrian.org via nnimap...
Opening nnimap server on mail.bactrian.org...
imap: Connecting to mail.bactrian.org...
imap: Connecting to mail.bactrian.org...failed
Unable to open nnimap:mail.bactrian.org, go offline? (y or n) 
Unable to open nnimap:mail.bactrian.org, go offline? (y or n) No
Opening nnimap server on mail.bactrian.org...failed
Opening nnimap server on mail.bactrian.org...
Denied server
Opening nnimap server on mail.bactrian.org...failed
No new newsgroups

  (mail.bactrian.org is the aforementioned server B, of course.)  But
  if I turn the nnml/imap stuff off, I get:

Reading active file from mail.bactrian.org via nnimap...
Opening nnimap server on mail.bactrian.org...
imap: Connecting to mail.bactrian.org...
imap: Opening IMAP connection with `ssh %s imapd'...
imap: Opening IMAP connection with `ssh %s imapd'...done
Waiting for response from mail.bactrian.org...done
Opening nnimap server on mail.bactrian.org...done
nnimap: Listing subscribed mailboxes on mail.bactrian.org...
Loading utf7...
Loading utf7...done
nnimap: Listing subscribed mailboxes on mail.bactrian.org...done
No new newsgroups

  So it does successfully do the ssh stuff in this case.  (But even in
  this case I still can't read my news - I have no idea what's
  different now from a few months ago.)  This, at least, does seem to
  be evidence that nnml/imap(/ssl) and nnimap(/shell) are interfering
  with each other.

Any ideas?  This is XEmacs 21.4p12 (I think); I upgraded Gnus as part
of the process, and I don't know the older version number, but the new
version is 5.10.6.  (The older one isn't that much older.)

I'm including the relevant parts (and some irrelevant parts) of my
.gnus file below.

David Carlton
carlton@bactrian.org

(setq gnus-activate-foreign-newsgroups nil)
(setq gnus-activate-level 5)
(setq gnus-default-article-saver 'gnus-summary-save-in-file)
(setq gnus-group-default-list-level 1)
(setq gnus-group-sort-function 'gnus-group-sort-by-alphabet)
(setq gnus-level-subscribed 5)
(setq gnus-novice-user nil)
(setq gnus-select-method '(nnml ""))
(setq gnus-subscribe-newsgroup-method 'gnus-subscribe-hierarchically)

(setq mail-sources
      '(
        (file :path "/var/spool/mail/carlton")
        (imap :server "SECRET-HOST"
              :stream ssl
              :user "SECRET-NAME")
        ))

(setq gnus-secondary-select-methods
      '((nnimap "mail.bactrian.org"
                (nnimap-stream shell)
                (nnimap-list-pattern ("INBOX")))
        ))
(setq nnimap-expunge-on-close 'never)