Re: gnus-kill-newsgroup error

[Richmond]

Eric Abrahamsen wrote:
> 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?
It has gone for the time being, hopefully it will not return as I have
removed the instruction to subscribe automatically to new groups.

You theory is not nuts, but wouldn't I have found the lambda with my
find command? or maybe it would be a pointer only to something which
does not now exist?