"Roger T. Imai" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> posted [EMAIL PROTECTED], excerpted below, on Sat, 28 Jul 2007 21:12:54 -0500:
> Recent Windows refugee on Ubuntu Feisty. Pan 1.2 ran fine for a few > weeks, then yesterday unexpectedly closed without any warning in the > middle of a batch retrieval, and I haven't been able to re-start Pan > from the Applications menu since. Clicking on the launch icon gets no > response, no error message. > > I've tried: > 1. Uninstalling & re-installing from Add/Remove 2. Re-installing over > using Synaptic Package Manager > > I found out that I could start Pan from the Root Terminal [snip] > > Would appreciate any suggestions. If possible phrase your instructions > for a former intermediate Windows user, rank Linux newbie (2 months.) Welcome! May your time on Linux and with pan be enjoyable and useful. =8^) Let's see if this is clear enough. If not, don't hesitate to ask further. pan 1.2? pan 1.20? It's possible this is a strange Ubuntu version, but pan doesn't have such versions as it ships. I'm guessing (I don't run Ubuntu so can't say for sure) it's pan 0.120. It may also be something way old like pan 0.14.2. After you get this straightened out, you may wish to upgrade. The newest version is 0.131, and there's an Ubuntu user that contributes packages, as can be found linked from the pan site, http://pan.rebelbase.com . There have been a number of fixes since 0.120, and it's possible it'll be more stable for you. I'll let him step in and give you specific upgrade steps if necessary, however, because as I said I don't run Ubuntu, or indeed any Debian based distribution (FWIW, I run Gentoo/amd64), so I couldn't give you the specifics. Meanwhile, back to the problem at hand... The problem would appear to be that the crash corrupted pan's database. The following is a bit deeper than it has to be, but is intended to help you become the intermediate user on Linux you were on MSWormOS. Again, ask if anything's not clear. As with most programs intended to be run by the user (as opposed to the sysadmin) on Unix/Linux, pan can normally only write to the user's home dir and possibly other locations the user has write permissions for. It can't write to the system area or to other users' home dirs. Thus, an important troubleshooting technique on Linux, when something won't work for a particular user, is to try it for another user. I've actually found it's sometimes useful to create a "testing" user just for that purpose. Keep its profile clean/generic, so there's no cruft built up, and don't hesitate to blow its config away once in awhile so it /has/ to start with a clean profile. If it works for that user, you /know/ it's a problem somewhere in your normal user's config. Also note that it's generally /not/ a good idea to use root as the test user. For one thing, if an app is screwed up bad enough, running it as root could kill the entire system, since root can overwrite anything, including system data and that of other users. For another, because root /does/ have those extra permissions, running an app as root isn't testing whether an ordinary user can run it at all. So, the idea is, create your test user and try it first. If it works, you know it's a problem with your normal user's profile or data, since it works with one regular user but not another. You may however occasionally run into permissions issues, where you suspect that a regular user simply doesn't have permission to do whatever it is you are testing. In /that/ case, it /may/ be useful to try it as root, BUT BE VERY CAREFUL when you do so, keeping in mind that if something goes wrong, if you are running as root, it could REALLY go wrong, and screw up your entire system. Also, be very careful about running anything that connects to the untrusted Internet as root. Since you can't control what someone posts to the newsgroups you subscribe to, that includes pan. If someone tries an exploit when you are running pan as your regular user, the max they can do is damage that user. If someone does the same when you are running pan as root... (For this reason, it's also worth keeping your really valuable stuff, bank records, etc, as a user other than your regular one. That way, if someone /does/ get in and can access your regular user's files, they still can't get at your /really/ important info, since it's not accessible by your regular user.) OK, hopefully that didn't scare you away. =8^) If not, maybe you're one more step from newbie to intermediate user on Linux, too. =8^) So now we know pan's data is corrupted. How do we fix it? Well, pan's data is stored by default in ~/.pan2. (Older versions used ~/.pan.) As you may or may not already know, on Unix like OSs including Linux, ~/ is a shortcut for your home dir. It doesn't always work, but it often does, and its a useful convention when one doesn't know what particular user is being discussed or whether the standard /home/username convention is being followed on that particular system or not. Also, a leading dot beginning a filename makes it "hidden" -- it won't show up in most regular directory listings and the like. Thus, ~/.pan2/ refers to a hidden subdir of your homedir, called .pan2. If you don't see it in your file manager of choice, either enable viewing of hidden files, or just cd into the dir by entering the path directly. >From here, it's up to you. If you haven't customized pan all that much, and don't have any particular reason to want to save the stuff you've downloaded that's still stored there, you can simply blow away the entire .pan2 dir and start over again. OTOH, if you're like me and customize things enough that you cringe at losing more config than you absolutely have to to get things working again, it's likely we can save most or all the files there. To try to salvage what's salvageable, while at the same time pinning down the problem to a particular file, use the old trial and error method. First, save off everything to a backup dir. Then, try deleting various things, a subdir or a group of files at a time, trying to start pan with each try. If it still fails, try a different subdir/filegroup (copying the files you deleted back from the backup); if pan works, you've probably found the culprit and can move on. Once you pin down the subdir or file group, subdivide it further. Once you get an individual file, you can stop there, or if appropriate, dive into that file and use the same technique lines at a time rather than files at a time. The files are named intelligently so you can sort of figure out what's in them, and pan uses text based files, not unreadable binary junk, so diving into individual files either to see what they are or to delete specific lines for troubleshooting purposes, shouldn't be difficult. It's possible you'll find that the problem is a particular post or overview line that pan chokes on. If so, as suggested above, install the latest pan (0.131) and try again. If it's still choking on it and you are comfortable doing so, consider filing a bug on it. You may also wish to post the message-id, group, subject, author, and date, here, so others can confirm if it's a problem for them or not. So anyway, you should be able to get pan up and running under your normal user again, even if you simply delete all its data and start over. However, if you have a bit of patience, it's likely you can trace the problem further, likely recovering all but that one file or even specific lines within the file. Hope this has been useful. =8^) -- 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 _______________________________________________ Pan-users mailing list Pan-users@nongnu.org http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/pan-users
