Re: [Pan-users] Runtime error when posting messages

[Duncan]

Dick Baker posted on Wed, 17 Jan 2018 07:22:06 -0800 as excerpted:

> For the past two days, every time I try to post a message to a
> newsgroup, Pan responds with this error message:
> 
>          Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library This application has
>          requested the Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way. 
>          Please contact the application's support team for more
>          information.
> 
> When I click OK in that window to clear it, Pan crashes entirely.
> 
> Am using 0.140, Chocolate Salty Balls for several years now without
> problems, but suddenly this.  Anybody have any idea what could be going
> on?

I left MS behind just after the turn of the century, but FWIW, I've seen 
posting crashes recently on Linux (Gentoo) running live-git pan, as well.

The posts are posted, tho, and I have a hotkey setup to launch pan, so I 
just restart it, and can then check for new headers and can normally 
fetch what I just posted, thus demonstrating that it /did/ post before 
the crash.

But here it only happens occasionally.


I've not nailed it down, but I suspect it may have something to do with 
the character-set of what I'm replying to and the content of the quote.  
I'm guessing that the post I replied to has some strange characters that 
are fine in whatever character-set it is set to, and that when I reply, 
pan uses whatever charset I've set as default.  If some of the characters 
in the quote (or person's name in the attribution) are invalid in the 
charset I'm posting with... crash!

That would explain why it doesn't happen all the time.  It only happens 
when the quote includes some invalid-in-my-charset characters.

But I don't know why it would then post successfully before the actual 
crash. <shrug>


Regardless of whether it's that or not, the problem is very likely to be 
library related, I'd guess gmime.  FWIW, gmime-2.6.23 (libgmime-2.6.so.0, 
symlinked to libgmime-2.6.so.0.623.0, being the actual library file) here.

If that's correct, then upgrading/downgrading gmime should fix the 
problem (note that on MS, you may be using a pan with gmime statically 
compiled in at build-time or shipped with your pan package, so whoever 
built it may have to update the gmime they build with and ship an 
update), tho I've obviously not investigated what versions are affected.

-- 
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