Re: [Evolution] evolution 2.4 crashes on startup

[guenther <guenther rudersport de>]

> I submitted this bug on gentoo, but either their busy with the gnome
> 2.12 release, or they don't have much time for evolution at the moment,
> or I'm impatient!!  So I thought I would provide the details here in the
> hope that someone could help me sort it out.
>
> I upgraded gnome to 2.12 including evoluion 2.4.  However, on my pc at
> home, I can use evo fine, but my wife can't - it crashes before any
> windows are open with the messages:

First of all, verify that you got the latest versions available. (Which
in fact means Evo 2.4.1, e-d-s 1.4.1.1, GtkHTML 3.8.1, libsoup 2.2.6 --
however, e-d-s 1.4.1 is fine unless you are using evolution-exchange.)

You did not mention the exact version that is crashing. Anway, as your
mailer is Evo 2.4.1 and it crashes for your wife, I assume it's a
different account on the very same machine, no?

If this is true, the reason for the crashes is related to the data or
settings of your wife.


Now there are quite some ways to start debugging this and at hunt down
the real cause.

a) Have a look at the project page outlining details to get more verbose
   debug spewage in the terminal. Maybe this helps already.

   http://gnome.org/projects/evolution/bugs.shtml

   Start Evo with 'CAMEL_DEBUG=all evoltion' and watch the output.

b) As this likely is data or settings related, it is a particular
   component only. To check this, start Evo with a component explicitely
   set, rather than picking up the last used one (mailer, presumably):

   $ evolution -c tasks

   will start Evo with the Tasks component. Does it still crash? See
   'evolution --help' for other options.

c) Does it crash for a new test user on that system? Set up a new user
   account and start Evo for the very first time. Do you get the wizard?

d) If it is the Mailer component crashing, a common cause is a
   particular mail that crashes while being rendered. To prevent
   rendering of the mail, you can disable the preview pane and set the
   message display to 'source', which will display the raw message.

   Disable the preview pane:
   $ gconftool-2 --set /apps/evolution/mail/display/show_preview --type bool 0

   Display the raw source message:
   $ gconftool-2 --set /apps/evolution/mail/display/message_style --type int 2

   Note: Both keys above are valid in Evo 2.2, not entirely sure if they
   still apply to 2.4.

Based upon the information we get out of the debugging above, there may
be easy solutions to this problem. In the easiest case (a bad mail
crashing the rendering) you could simply delete that message. nother
solution might be to start fresh and import all the data you need.

(Beware, there are some background tasks we need to take care of, so
don't just start moving random dirs and messing with the data manually.)


[ long snipp ]
> Sorry for the long post, but I need to fix it for other users!!  Any
> help, even "recompile blah" would be appreciated.

Other user_s_? You mentioned your wife only.

It would be helpful to know, how much users are affected by this and if
they do share the same machine...

...guenther


-- 
char *t="\10pse\0r\0dtu\0  ghno\x4e\xc8\x79\xf4\xab\x51\x8a\x10\xf4\xf4\xc4";
main(){ char h,m=h=*t++,*x=t+2*h,c,i,l=*x,s=0; for (i=0;i<l;i++){ i%8? c<<=1:
(c=*++x); c&128 && (s+=h); if (!(h>>=1)||!t[s+h]){ putchar(t[s]);h=m;s=0; }}}