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 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?

Yeah, I guess the find command would have found it -- the only way this
error could have arisen is if an older Emacs wrote the dribble file, and
a newer Emacs read it, meaning the file would have had to have been
saved to disk. Unless you were running the find command in different
directory tree...