Re: Wrong type argument: number-or-marker-p, e

[Henrik Christian Grove]

Tassilo Horn <heimdall@uni-koblenz.de> writes:

> Henrik Christian Grove <grove@sslug.dk> writes:
>
> Hi Henrik,
>
>> But when my newsserver is available gnus just says "Wrong type
>> argument: number-or-marker-p, e" during startup, and stops.
>>
>> I don't find that error message very helpful, so I'm hoping some of
>> you can give me an idea of what to look for and where - or possibly a
>> way to fix the problem.
>
> Put 
>
>   (setq debug-on-error t)
>
> into your ~/.emacs. If the error happens again, it will enter the
> debugger and a backtrace will be displayed. This should point you to
> where the error occurs.

Indeed.

The output from the debugger (I haven't taken the complete lines of
bytecode, one of them was 1700+ chars long, and I doubt anyone would
find them interesting):
Debugger entered--Lisp error: (wrong-type-argument number-or-marker-p e)
  byte-code("Æ^H!\210eb\210Çp!ÈÉÊ\217È^Y^Z^[\nËW\203
  ^@ÌÍ\n\"\210\202\217^@\nÎU\203k^@ÏÈ^\^]Ð \210Ñ
  
q\210eb\210m\204b^@ÒÓ!\203\\^@ÔË!^N^_\230\203\\^@ÕÖÔ×!!^K\"\211^T\203\\^@\fÖÔØ!!¡\210Øy\210\2024^@Ù
 \210Ï^Q*\202$
  
gnus-agent-read-agentview("/home/grove/News/agent/nntp/ogel/debianforum.snak/.agentview")
  
gnus-cache-file-contents("/home/grove/News/agent/nntp/ogel/debianforum.snak/.agentview"
 gnus-agent-file-loading-cache gnus-agent-read-agentview)
  gnus-agent-load-alist("nntp+ogel:debianforum.snak")
  gnus-agent-get-local("nntp+ogel:debianforum.snak")
  gnus-agent-possibly-alter-active("nntp+ogel:debianforum.snak" (42
  . 81))
  gnus-activate-group("nntp+ogel:debianforum.snak" scan)
  gnus-get-unread-articles(nil)
  gnus-setup-news(nil nil nil)
  byte-code("^H\204^N^@ \204^N^@Æ
  \210\202^^@ÇÈ!\210É\n!^S\f\204^^^@^M\203!^@Ê \210^N^^\203.^@Ë
  \210ÌÍÎ\"\210^N^_\2038^@ÏÐÑ\"\210ÏÒÓ\"\210ÔÕ^N ^H#\210ÇÖ!\210× \210Ø^N
  !\210Ù \210ÚÛ!\210Ü \210ÇÝ!\210Õ\207" [dont-c$
  gnus-1(nil nil nil)
  gnus(nil)
* call-interactively(gnus)
  execute-extended-command(nil)
  call-interactively(execute-extended-command)

and News/agent/nntp/ogel/debianforum.snak/.agentview is seriously
damaged, the contents (as less displays it):
l^@e^@ ^@S^@e^@c^@u^@r^@i^@

not exactly your average .agentview file, luckily it's even a
extremely-low-traffic and low-interest group. 

It's too late for me now, to try and fix this, and see if there are
other problems, but now I know how to get on with it. Thank you to both
you and Jesse.

.Henrik

-- 
"Det er fundamentalt noget humanistisk vås, at der er noget, 
 der hedder blød matematik."
   --- citat Henrik Jeppesen, dekan for det naturvidenskabelige fakultet