Rmail failure

[Brendan Halpin]

rmail fails to get new mail, with the following error:
rmail-get-new-mail: Wrong type argument: char-or-string-p, nil



In GNU Emacs 22.0.50.1 (i486-pc-linux-gnu, X toolkit)
 of 2006-04-17 on pacem, modified by Debian
X server distributor `The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.60900000
configured using `configure '--build' 'i486-linux-gnu' '--host' 
'i486-linux-gnu' '--prefix=/usr' '--sharedstatedir=/var/lib' 
'--libexecdir=/usr/lib' '--localstatedir=/var' '--infodir=/usr/share/info' 
'--mandir=/usr/share/man' '--with-pop=yes' 
'--enable-locallisppath=/etc/emacs-snapshot:/etc/emacs:/usr/local/share/emacs/22.0.50/site-lisp:/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/22.0.50/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/22.0.50/leim'
 '--with-x=yes' '--with-x-toolkit=athena' '--with-toolkit-scroll-bars' 
'CFLAGS=-DDEBIAN -g -O2 -Wno-pointer-sign' 'build_alias=i486-linux-gnu' 
'host_alias=i486-linux-gnu''

Important settings:
  value of $LC_ALL: nil
  value of $LC_COLLATE: nil
  value of $LC_CTYPE: nil
  value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil
  value of $LC_MONETARY: nil
  value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil
  value of $LC_TIME: nil
  value of $LANG: en_IE.UTF-8
  locale-coding-system: utf-8
  default-enable-multibyte-characters: t

Major mode: RMAIL

Minor modes in effect:
  tooltip-mode: t
  auto-compression-mode: t
  tool-bar-mode: t
  mouse-wheel-mode: t
  menu-bar-mode: t
  file-name-shadow-mode: t
  global-font-lock-mode: t
  font-lock-mode: t
  blink-cursor-mode: t
  unify-8859-on-encoding-mode: t
  utf-translate-cjk-mode: t
  line-number-mode: t

Recent input:
<right> <left> <escape> x s h e l l <return> d i r 
SPC / v a r / m a i l / b r <tab> <return> <escape> 
x r m <return> y q <up> <down> C-x k <return> <escape> 
x r m <return> y <escape> x e m a c s SPC b u <tab> 
<tab> <backspace> <backspace> <backspace> <backspace> 
<backspace> <backspace> <backspace> <backspace> <backspace> 
u <backspace> r e p o <tab> r t SPC t <backspace> e 
m <tab> SPC <return>

Recent messages:
File RMAIL is large (38MB), really open? (y or n) 
Counting messages...done
Getting mail from /var/mail/brendan...
rmail-get-new-mail: Wrong type argument: char-or-string-p, nil
call-interactively: Text is read-only
Making completion list...
Loading help-mode...done
Loading emacsbug...
Loading regexp-opt...done
Loading emacsbug...done