[Pan-users] Re: Re: crash, debug build, etc.

[Duncan]

David Shochat <address@hidden> posted
address@hidden, excerpted below, on  Tue, 04 Jul 2006
07:30:00 -0400:

> I do NOT get the crash when I use a different news server. So it is 
> something in the newsgroup list of this particular server 
> (newsgroups.comcast.net, actually giganews) which is triggering the bug. 
> Now if only I could figure out what the offending group name is, maybe I 
> could come up with a patch, or at least a useful bug report.

In /that/ case...

1)  Try moving your ~/.pan2 dir elsewhere, and starting with a clean
config.  Recreate the problem server (only) and download the newsgroup
list, but do /not/ yet subscribe to any groups.  See if it crashes at that
step.  If as you said it's clicking on the twisty after downloading the
group list, it should.

If it crashes, you know it's the newsgroup list so you can simply attach
that to your bug report.  Charles should be able to reproduce it from the
same list and trace it from there.  Since it's just the group list, you
don't even have to worry about any... sensitive... groups.  <g>

2)  If that doesn't trigger it, it's apparently some interaction between
your current config and the group list.  Could be a problem to trace,
without the debug.

BTW, another debug tool you can try is strace.  That's what I usually use.
I'm not sure it can do a detailed symbol debugging, but it can trace a lot
of other stuff.  I'll frequently use it to trace file accesses, to see
where the app is looking for its config files or whatever.  It's often
faster to do that than get the info other ways, by googling or groking the
source (especially when I'm not a C/C++ hacker, tho I can often follow the
flow well enough to bumble thru a small section if necessary).  For
someone not technical enough to do much with the symbols anyway, but
who can read a manpage and feed switches to a command line, it's quite a
handy tool.



-- 
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