Not being an elisp person, I think I'm stuck. I've used Gnus and bbdb for some number of years on Windows and now, for several years, on Linux (various Ubuntu releases and Debian Lenny). I've had a problem for the last year or so with an "Args out of range" error when opening an email in Gnus, but it goes away when I restart Emacs and Gnus. (I've posted here before, but I never figured out a way around that problem.)
Now I've moved to LMDE, which came with Emacs 23.2.1, Gnus v5.13, and bbdb 2.36. While I can read email, bbdb always fails with "Args out of range", and restarting Emacs and Gnus doesn't seem to help. I begin to suspect my .bbdb is corrupt. As it's some 4,000 lines long, I'm not sure exactly where to start: is the the ~300 extra levels of parentheses around the entire structure, is it the occasional octal character, or is it something else? I installed (I think) the latest bbdb 3.02 from CVS on savannah (I did `make all`; I didn't see a `make install`), but it doesn't work, either. I noticed that Roland doesn't use customize, but I do (I had a mixed .gnus/customize configuration, but conflicts between the two caused me problems, so I arbitrarily moved to customize), and I noticed that he uses vm and so hasn't tested bbdb3 much on Gnus. As I presume the bbdb that came with Debian Testing / LMDE works with Gnus on such a system, I'm looking for an efficient and effective way to get going again. The alternatives I see: - Figure out a semi-automated way to review and clean my .bbdb without learning elisp first (I can read it to a degree, but I've not coded anything significant in elisp). - Remove bbdb 3.02, reinstall the version that comes with LMDE from its repository, and try to figure out a configuration (likely using customize) to make it work. - Move my .bbdb out of the way and start over with a clean file. If that works, figure out a way to add selected entries from my old .bbdb into the new one. - Find a replacement for bbdb (lsdb??), if it exists for Gnus. Do you have other suggestions? Do you have suggestions which seems like a good way to go? I suspect I'd get back on the air fastest by removing bbdb3, even though I suspect it will become _the_ way to go, reinstalling bbdb from the repository, moving my .bbdb out of the way, and starting over. It would _really_ be nice, though, to be able to capture some of my old bbdb entries without getting any that are possibly creating my current pain. I'd try cleaning my current .bbdb first, if there was a way to do that. I haven't even found (or at least recognized) a definition of the file structure, though. Suggestions? Bill -- Bill Harris http://makingsense.facilitatedsystems.com/ Facilitated Systems Everett, WA USA http://www.facilitatedsystems.com/ phone: +1 425 374-1845 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Colocation vs. Managed Hosting A question and answer guide to determining the best fit for your organization - today and in the future. http://p.sf.net/sfu/internap-sfd2d _______________________________________________ bbdb-info@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bbdb-info BBDB Home Page: http://bbdb.sourceforge.net/
