Re: [Pan-users] Re: freeze, high CPU getting new headers

[David Shochat]

On Aug 1, 2008, at 6:29 PM, Duncan wrote:

> That could be a couple things.
>
> First, make sure you're comparing peaches to peaches (I started to use
> apples, as traditional, but when one /is/ an Apple... =8^) .  Are you
> comparing the same group on both machines?  Suppose there's a  
> message (or
> a regular poster, thus a continuing set of messages) with a bad  
> header or
> something that pan's tripping on.  If you aren't trying to fetch the  
> same
> group in the same general period from the same server (so the set of
> messages is the same), the dataset is different and the test not  
> accurate.

Good point. It's the same server, same group. But to make it a really  
controlled experiment, I should start both with clean profiles, enter  
the same group, and tell both to load the same number of days worth.  
Maybe do the --debug on both too, and see what's different.

> If you are indeed testing the same dataset, then in addition to pan,  
> it
> could well be a problem with one of the libraries, say the i18n
> (internationalization) stuff in (IIRC) pango.  The libraries are  
> likely
> different versions and even if the same, the patches applied by the
> distribution may be different.
As I said in responding to walt, I suspect gtk2.0 (tree widget). But  
both the Mac and the Linux system look like they have the same version  
(2.10). At least, in both cases, .../lib/gtk-2.0 has a subdirectory  
named 2.10.0.
> What I suspect is happening is that, if it's not just the size of the
> group and the number of headers that need processed (which it won't  
> be if
> you did the correct peaches to peaches comparison, as I mentioned),  
> pan's
> getting stuck in a loop somewhere.  This could well be due to a  
> malformed
> header, but it could be a normal one with i18n rules misapplied,  
> too.  If
> it's a malformed header, it could be only on that server or a group of
> servers that got the message from the same propagation, or it could  
> have
> been as posted, so that way everywhere.

I can get it to happen in any large group.

> The way to trace it would be, most likely, to run pan using a  
> debugger,

Yes, it may come to that. But probably not until I've tried  
reinstalling gtk2 or maybe the whole distro.

Thanks for your detailed response.
-- David