gnus is freezing right after startup

[William Warren]

Thanks for reading this. I have a problem with gnus freezing right after 
 I start it. I get a message that says "Loading gnus-start...done", but 
then emacs stops responding. The only Google hit was from 2001, and it 
mentioned a file Debian doesn't use, so I'll ask for help from the group.

I use emacs 21.4.1 and gnus 5.9.0 on Debian Sarge.

Here's the .gnus.el file:

(setq user-mail-address "william_warren_nonoise@speakeasy(William\ 
Warren).net")
(setq user-full-name "William Warren")
(setq gnus-select-method '(nntp "news.speakeasy.net"))
(setq send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it)
(setq message-send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it)
(setq smtpmail-default-smtp-server "localhost")


I set the toggle-debug-on-quit option, and bailed out of gnus with Cntl-g.

Here's the debug output:

Debugger entered--Lisp error: (quit)
  signal(quit nil)
  byte-code("ÀÁ!ˆÂÃÄ\"ˆÄ‡" [message "Quit retrieving data from nntp" 
signal quit nil] 3)
  nntp-send-mode-reader()
  run-hooks(nntp-server-opened-hook)
  nntp-open-connection(#<buffer  *nntpd*>)
  nntp-open-server("news.speakeasy.net" nil)
  gnus-open-server((nntp "news.speakeasy.net"))
  gnus-start-news-server(nil)
  gnus-1(nil nil nil)
  gnus(nil)
* call-interactively(gnus)
  execute-extended-command(nil)
  call-interactively(execute-extended-command)

All suggestions welcome. Thanks for your time

William

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