[Pan-users] Re: Pan hanging on exit

[Duncan]

Joe Zeff posted on Sun, 23 Aug 2009 21:04:30 -0700 as excerpted:

> I've not had any system crashes, although there've been a few power
> drops.  However, the system came right back up, and ext3 doesn't just
> get corrupted like that. I know there's a way to force fsck on reboot,
> and it's not like I have much uptime to waste -- there was a kernel
> update last night -- so it probably wouldn't waste that much time.  One
> thing I did notice in newsrc-1 (and only) is that there were gaps in the
> list of articles before I "condensed" it, but that shouldn't be an
> issue, especially as I've edited them out.  (The group is
> self-moderated, but occasionally an improperly configured server will
> accept a post it shouldn't.  Naturally, my service is set up properly so
> I never see them, and that explains the gaps.)  Maybe I should rename
> newsrc-1 and let pan rebuild it?  It's not like I don't know how to get
> back to where I was...

I'd try that, and if that doesn't do it, renaming the entire ~/.pan2 or 
whatever directory.  If it's seriously customized, you can do the bisect 
(aka process of elimination) thing, moving parts of it in and out, 
starting and quitting pan, until you see where the trouble is.  If it's 
not seriously customized and you don't have anything you seriously want 
to save or track, just blowing most or all of it away and starting over 
is probably less hassle than doing the bisect.

But meanwhile, there's something else that's very important to check, 
that may actually be your problem.  Ubuntu users were the first to report 
this, but it isn't necessarily limited to them.  But AFAIK it *IS* 
limited to GNOME users, which you already mentioned you are, and if 
you're an Ubuntu user as well, and hadn't already looked at this, it's 
very likely your problem.

Apparently, Gnome's accessibility agent does NOT get along with pan AT 
ALL, and this sort of busy-hang, but eventually come out of it, has been 
a known issue where pan is running on Gnome computers with it running.  
On Ubuntu, the Gnome accessibility agent apparently runs by default, so 
as mentioned, they were the first to report it.

I'm a Gentoo and KDE user, so what I know of this is only what has been 
on the list, and I forgot what specifically the name of that agent is.  
Perhaps a Gnome and/or Ubuntu user will post the specifics, or you can 
look it up in the list archives if you need to, but anyway, look for 
something of that nature, and shut it off (this assumes of course that 
you don't need it for anything specific, if you do, then find a different 
news client, as pan just isn't going to work with it at present).  If you 
have had it running, once you do find it and shut it off, you should 
DEFINITELY notice that pan's performance is MUCH better than it was.  

The only problem is that the earlier reports weren't at shutdown, but 
when pan was fetching and trying to thread new headers.  So it might not 
be that issue after all.  But I think at least some of those reports were 
from binary group users, and their profile will be different enough from 
yours that that might explain the difference.  Anyway, if that agent is 
running and you don't specifically need it, shutting it off shouldn't 
hurt, and will almost certainly bring FAR better performance, so there's 
little hurt in trying it, especially when the gains could be so great in 
doing so.

-- 
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