Re: Failing to read new mail

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Chong Yidong <address@hidden>
> Date: Mon, 02 Oct 2006 15:09:22 -0400
> Cc: address@hidden
> 
> Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> >     Getting mail from /mnt/snout/home/jpff/mbox...
> >     Converting to Babyl format...110
> >     rmail-decode-region: Wrong type argument: number-or-marker-p, nil
> >
> > Could you try doing M-x toggle-debug-on-error before you get new mail?
> > That way, when it gets the error, you will get a backtrace.
> > Please mail us the backtrace.
> 
> The only way that rmail-decode-region can signal that error is if the
> FROM or TO argument is not a number.  But rmail-decode-region is only
> called from two places in Emacs, and it's impossible for that
> condition to occur there.

FWIW, I can confirm that this has happened to me as well, on a few
very rare occasions.  Unfortunately, it happened with very large mbox
files, and I didn't at the time have time to investigate.

> Does the error happen with emacs -q (or at least with minimal
> customizations to tell rmail where to get mail from)?

I doubt that this could lead us anywhere.  The problem happens only
very seldom, at least to me, so I think customizations have nothing to
do with that.  Rather, I think it's some rare condition with the
mailbox itself.