Balsa Breakage

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Jun 24, 2006 6:51 pm Post subject: Balsa Breakage

Hi,

My system is all ~x86, so thats GNOME 2.14.1 and Balsa 2.3.8 built with glibc-2.4 and gcc-4.1.1
A recent update to Gnome has broken balsa rather badly. 2.3.8 crashes ever few minutes an will no longer build as it contains depreciated symbols.

Google says the fix is in Balsa 2.3.11, which I can't find but 2.3.12 is out there.

Having bumped the balsa-2.3.8 ebuild in my overlay, and ripped out the crypto flag to get it to link, what comes out the end is no better.
It still crashes. Theres no error message - even running it from an xterm. Removing threading support doesn't help.

Google suggests that the mimimum verisons of some required packages are later than those in portage, so I've added them to my overlay and fixed the balsa ebuild to require them. No change.

Any ideas for making progress ?
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

Gergan Penkov · Posted: Sat Jun 24, 2006 8:30 pm Post subject:

hm I always wanted to try balsa, but it never worked for me, either not starting or just crashing.
I've tried to compile 2.3.12, but it has problem with gpgme and threads, patching the ebuild from 2.3.8 to 2.3.12:

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Jun 24, 2006 10:49 pm Post subject:

Gergan Penkov,

I can't make your configure.in patch apply - not even by hand
The cinfigure.in.rej file is correct - it has both the before and afer versons.

Hmm - Bug buddy shows 'system-supplied DSO ar 0xffffe000 has disappeared.
That addess is rather worrying - its the start of the BIOS in protected mode.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

Gergan Penkov · Posted: Sat Jun 24, 2006 10:59 pm Post subject:

hm strange,
the problem was that gpgme-config does not take --thread=pthread but --thread=pth
now if you could not apply the patch probably it could be the cat-line in the beginning, but you could easily recreate it:
ebuild /xxx/yyy/mail-client/balsa/balsa-2.3.12.ebuild unpack
cd /var/tmp/portage/balsa-2.3.12/work/balsa-2.3.12/
cp configure.in configure.in.orig
edit configure.in
find and change
BALSA_LIBS="$BALSA_LIBS `$gpgmecfg --thread=pthread --libs`"
to
BALSA_LIBS="$BALSA_LIBS `$gpgmecfg --thread=pth --libs`"
diff -Nua /var/tmp/portage/balsa-2.3.12/work/balsa-2.3.12/configure.in.orig /var/tmp/portage/balsa-2.3.12/work/balsa-2.3.12/configure.in > /xxx/yyy/mail-client/balsa/files/pthreads.patch
redigest and emerge it should work
edit:
oh my bad the diff header could break in this way, better use
cd /var/tmp/portage/balsa-2.3.12/work/balsa-2.3.12/
diff -Nua configure.in.orig configure.in > /xxx/yyy/mail-client/balsa/files/pthreads.patch
_________________
"I knew when an angel whispered into my ear,
You gotta get him away, yeah
Hey little bitch!
Be glad you finally walked away or you may have not lived another day."
Godsmack

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Jun 24, 2006 11:36 pm Post subject:

Gergan Penkov,

Your original patch has a line of context missing from the end - I spotted that but miscounted and added 2 lines.
Having recreated the patch, its happy.
Well, it compiles and launches but it only runs for a few seconds then crashes again.

It will open and stay open as long as the user interface isn't used. Turning off threads doesn't help either.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

Gergan Penkov · Posted: Sat Jun 24, 2006 11:45 pm Post subject:

I will try and look if the cvs-version works better, but at least now it could be compiled with all the use-flags here

And if you see the gui you are a little bit luckier than I am, as it dies directly and does not show anything

_________________
"I knew when an angel whispered into my ear,
You gotta get him away, yeah
Hey little bitch!
Be glad you finally walked away or you may have not lived another day."
Godsmack

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 10:28 am Post subject:

Gergan Penkov,

I think the problem is outside of Balsa now.
I can make another Gnome program crash with the same backtrace in BugBuddy. Thats Bugbuddy itself.
It follows that if its a single point of failure, its something they both use.

Edit to add fix
mail-client/balsa-2.3.12 and gtk+-2.8.19 are broken together.
Your patch for the ebuild works on ~x86 but you must downgrade gtk+ to 2.8.18
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

genterminl · Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2006 12:16 pm Post subject:

I've been using balsa 2.3.8 without problems for many months. However, I tried to re-emerge and got a failure
main.c: In function 'balsa_init':
main.c:252: erreur: 'GNOME_PARAM_POPT_TABLE' undeclared (first use in this function)
(This has been reported as bug 137922 )
As said above and in the bug, something balsa depends on has apparently upgraded and depracated some symbols. My previously emerged version remains perfectly stable, although I seem to be missing a few icons. However, 2.3.8 is the latest in portage (and 2.0.15-r2 is the latest not ~x86). How hard would it be to modify the ebuilld for 2.3.8 to change one of the RDEPEND lines to roll back the offending package to an earlier version? I know this probably would not work for someone who runs all ~x86, but I run mostly stable, with only a few packages ~x86.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2006 12:25 pm Post subject:

genterminl,

I don't know - mail-client/balsa has a lot of dependancies and yes, 2.3.8 continues to work, providing they are satified.
You can no longer buld it though.

I don't see how going back is useful - thats partly why upstream issued the updates.
I can provide ebuilds for 2.3.12 and 2.3.13 if that helps - you will need to run an overlay.
I need to do more testing before I let them out though.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

genterminl · Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2006 1:02 pm Post subject:

NeddySeagoon,

Thanks for the offer. 2.3.8 continues to work fine for me, so I'm not in any rush, and I haven't used overlays at all yet. I suppose this is as good a time as any to learn, so I'll keep an eye out here and be willing to test when you are willing to release.

However, I'd argue a little about whether fixing 2.3.8 so it compiles would be going back. It's the highest version in portage, and it looke to me like it wouldn't compile on a new install. In my mind, this means that releasing the upgraded depndency without fixing balsa broke something. I know the developers can't test everything, but ... I suppose getting a newer balsa into portage is really the right thing to do. Hope I can help, at least with some testing.

genterminl

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2006 2:24 pm Post subject:

genterminl,

You can get my overlay.
You need at least the mail-client branch.
The 2.6.12 ebiuld is now broken for me, at least, the configure fails, so I've abandoned it.
2.6.13 builds and runs OK as long as you don;'t have USE="crypt" set.
It tells you now, instead of just ignoring the setting, which was OK for me but not the wider world.
There is a diff file, showing changes from the 2.6.8 to 2.6.13 ebuilds. A line starting with a - is removed, a line starting with a + is added.
Based on information from Linux From Scratch, I've updated minimum versions required for some packages, I did not test with the original 2.3.8 ebuild versions. You may wish to revert these and try for yourself.

In /etc/make.conf set your PORTDIR_OVERLAY=/usr/local/portage makedir /usr/local/portage and copy everything you need from my overlay there, maintainging the directory struture. If all is well, when you

genterminl · Posted: Sun Sep 03, 2006 3:26 pm Post subject:

Thanks for all the info and support. I created an overlay and copied your ebuild, but I used all the original dependencies from 2.3.8. Compiled with gcc-3.4.6 (with crypt and without threads USE flags) it compiles and runs fine. I'm in process of recompiling everything due to gcc upgrade to 4.1, so I'll see how that goes, and maybe try turning on threads to see if it still breaks.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sun Sep 03, 2006 3:31 pm Post subject:

genterminl,

I use gcc-4.1.1 with threads and without crypto. Works for me.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.