[Pan-users] Re: Error sending email

[Duncan]

Kenneth P. Turvey posted
<address@hidden>, excerpted below,  on
Sun, 12 Mar 2006 18:21:44 -0600:

> I'm getting an error sending email.  The two log messages are:
> 
> pan- pan_socket_putline: assertion 'is_nonempty_string(line)' failed.
> Error writing to socket.
> 
> I checked and I can telnet into the mail server without any problem.  Is
> this a known bug?  Is there a known fix?  
> 
> Thanks. 
> 
> The version I'm using is 0.14.2.91
> 
> I'd rather not upgrade since I'm using the package provided by Ubuntu and
> I would like to stay within the package system.

Don't worry about upgrading... there's nothing to upgrade to at this point
besides CVS anyway, and while many say it's working well for them, CVS
pulls are definitely not something I'd recommend for any package, except
for those advanced users willing to fight with code that might not even
compile at any given time, and that's literally changing day to day.

It's not a widely known bug, no.  That version has been around for awhile
(Charles took a break for a bit over a year -- when it's a hobby, that 
happens sometimes) and has its warts but is basically functional and
stable -- nothing broken to /that/ extent.

Now, it /might/ be a problem between PAN and a library that changed out
from under it and wasn't tested with it.  That has happened before.

To help pin it down, try running PAN from an xterm/gterm/konsole/whatever.
PAN will then spit out some messages to stderr.  You can also try the
various debug options, of which there are several.  Run pan --help to get
a list.  In particular, besides the general debug, since the error seems
to be with sockets, and could be related to function calls possibly from
libraries, try the --debug-sockets and --debug-trace options.  One or more
of those should give you some data to pin it down further.  As you want to
stay with Ubuntu's packaged versions, you may or may not be able to fix it
right away, but you can certainly use the data to get further suggestions 
here and file a bug with Ubuntu.  If you follow up on it, Ubuntu should be
able to provide an appropriate patch for their next release, if nothing
else.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html