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>