Re: gnus-kill-newsgroup error

[Eric Abrahamsen]

Richmond <dnomhcir@gmx.com> writes:

> Eric Abrahamsen wrote:
>> Richmond <dnomhcir@gmx.com> writes:
>>
>>> Eric Abrahamsen wrote:
>>>> Richmond <dnomhcir@gmx.com> writes:
>>>>
>>>>> Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> writes:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Richmond <dnomhcir@gmx.com> writes:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Due to my computer dying I lost some changes. One of which was to stop
>>>>>>> subscribing to new groups. But even though I reapplied this change, I
>>>>>>> was unable to launch gnus because of this error. I cannot find any
>>>>>>> reference in the lisp to this function gnus-kill-newsgroup but something
>>>>>>> is calling it and then failing. I got gnus working in the end by
>>>>>>> removing the mozilla server from .gnus.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> There was a reference in to this function in .gnu-emacs but I renamed
>>>>>>> this file to dotgnu-emacs but still the error occured. Can functions get
>>>>>>> copied around?
>>>>>> `gnus-kill-newsgroup' was removed from Gnus (or at least this Gnus
>>>>>> change was merged into Emacs master) in 2012, so it's been a while.
>>>>> Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/25.3 (gnu/linux)
>>>> That's a pretty old Emacs -- is there a chance you could upgrade to 26?
>>>> 27 is almost out.
>>> Probably but I am not sure I want to just yet. On the last system which
>>> is now dead I did upgrade but it caused various other problems.
>>>
>>>>>> What version of Emacs are you using? You're not still loading an
>>>>>> external Gnus installation, are you?
>>>>>>
>>>>> No. I had to re-install linux etc. So starting from scratch.
>>>>>
>>>>>> You talk about changes, and "reapplying changes", what does that mean?
>>>>> Some time ago, maybe a couple of months, I asked in this group why gnus
>>>>> was subscribing to groups and as a result of that I made changes to
>>>>> .gnus and got rid of .gnu-emacs-custom
>>>>>> What seems most likely is that you've got some custom functions in
>>>>>> your.gnus.el or elsewhere that are still calling `gnus-kill-newsgroup'.
>>>>>>
>>>>> The problem is I cannot find any reference to it.
>>>>>
>>>>> I do this:
>>>>>
>>>>> find . -type f -print|xargs grep -i gnus-kill-newsgroup
>>>>>
>>>>> All it finds is this:
>>>>>
>>>>> ./dotgnu-emacs:      (gnus-kill-newsgroup newsgroup)))
>>>> So presumably this file is getting loaded somehow? I don't see that
>>>> that's a standard filename of any sort. If you look at that file, what
>>>> is that code a part of?
>>> I don't think it is getting loaded, although it might be. But it was the
>>> file which was called .gnu-emacs which I renamed to dotgnu-emacs so that
>>> it wouldn't get used. (dot = . )
>> If it's not getting loaded, I can't think of what else could be causing
>> the problem. Unless you've got some old *elc files lying around from a
>> previous installation. But if you're confident that you've searched all
>> the relevant locations, I'd say this file is still your culprit.
> I have changed the permissions on the file to zero so that it could not
> be loaded, but I didn't get any error.
>
> I am not able to prove much now, one way or another, because I removed
> and re-added the mozilla newsgroup.
>
> I have an idea which is pure speculation that gnus had somehow recorded
> its intention to kill some newsgroups because that's what I had been
> doing - killing new groups which I had been subscribed to, using ctrl-k,
> and so gnus was trying to finish this task on startup. But I can't see
> how this would have been recorded anywhere without recording the name
> "gnus-kill-newsgroup", unless it was encoded.

A completely nuts possibility is that you had a .gnus-dribble file from
an older Emacs, which had recorded a lambda containing a call to
`gnus-kill-newsgroup' as part of Gnus's undo mechanism as you were
killing. I'm just totally making things up at this point. But it sounds
like the problem is gone?