[Lilug-dev-sig] Best way to troubleshoot

[Rob Wilkens]

The debug version along with the source gave me an indication of part
of what's going on..  It looking like it sent a command to the pop3
server and is expecting either a + response or a - response but is
instead getting "7)" as the response line, and as the comment in the
code goes:

/* what do we do now?  f'knows! */

I believe this is an optonline server that is confusing the message
processing, and i'm betting i can "fix" it by deleting messages from
the server, but I'm not going to do that just yet, I'm going to work
on it more tomorrow or later next week.

Rob

On Thu, Dec 24, 2009 at 12:13 PM, Chris Knadle <Chris.Knadle at coredump.us> wrote:
> On Thursday 24 December 2009, Rob Wilkens wrote:
>> I've got an issue that I would think would belong on the lilug main
>> list, except I'm thinking of rather than complaining about the
>>  problem I might try to download the source and see if i can fix it
>>  myself.
>>
>> I've got an issue with evolution, I just installed ubuntu 9.10 and
>> evolution crashes with
>> " 'assertion `name != NULL` failed " .. and gives a little more
>> information  which it repeats until finally it says Segmentation
>> fault.
>>
>> I installed an IMAP and 2 POP accounts onto it just before it
>>  crashed on me.
>>
>> I'm probably going to be out the next day or two, and won't get
>> started right away, but can someone help get me up to speed with
>>  the best way to find the evolution source (google?) , the best
>>  debugging tools to use (gdb? something better?) , any trace tools
>>  worth installing, basically what i need to get started, presuming
>>  i'm familiar with some basics like hopefully the language its
>>  written in and general unix (not really x-windows or gnome)
>>  programming.
>
> I have a few initial suggestions.
>
> -  Some applications have an optional "debug" packaged version of the
> application that have debugging symbols compiled in to help debug
> problems.  Evolution is one of those -- so try installing the
> "evolution-dbg" package to see if that gives you a more descriptive
> error.  This will also every much help you if you try using gdb, which
> also needs these debugging symbols.
>
> -  Look at the Ubuntu/Debian bug reports to see if it's a known issue.
> It speeds the work up when you find out what others have found out
> about the problem already.
>
> -  If the bug is new, write a bug report.  This lets you get in
> contact with the Ubuntu/Debian developer of the package and also helps
> others that are also having the problem.  Being descriptive, curteous,
> and avoiding speculation seems to help get to a resolution of the
> issue the quickest.
>
>
> Other than that I'd say continue on the route you're already taking:
>   - try using gdb (or equivalent)
>   - install source via "sudo apt-get source evolution"
>   - install source dependencies via "apt-get build-dep evolution"
>   - when you're ready to try evolution after you've modified the
>     source, build a package you can install via "debuild -us -uc"
>     within source directory (it's part of the "devscripts" package)
>   - As you make changes to the source, you might want to consider
>     using source control (git, mecurial, etc)
>
> And of course, good luck!
>
>   -- Chris
>
> --
>
> Chris Knadle
> Chris.Knadle at coredump.us
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