bug#40923: M-x list-packages -> blah elpa.gnu.org blah: "incomprehensible buffer"

[Eduardo Ochs <eduardoochs@gmail.com>]

Hi list,

is ELPA working for everyone?

I was trying to record a screencast about Emacs and I decided to
create a new user with no rcfiles, and run everything from his
account. I then ran "emacs" to invoke the default Emacs here - this is
a Debian Stable, and M-x emacs-version says this:

  GNU Emacs 26.1 (build 2, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version
  3.24.5) of 2019-09-23, modified by Debian

Then I tried M-x list-packages. It did not list anything from ELPA,
and gave this error:

  error in process sentinel: Error retrieving:
  https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/archive-contents "incomprehensible
  buffer"

I installed gnu-elpa-keyring-update and tried M-x list-packages again;
same error. I started emacs again and ran M-x list-packages again:
same thing.

I would love to know how to debug the functions in package.el but I
don't. Please send sexps! =\

Btw, the file

  /home/eduardo/.emacs.d/elpa/archives/gnu/archive-contents/.signed

contains this, but in a single line:

  Good signature from 066DAFCB81E42C40 GNU ELPA Signing Agent (2019)
  <elpasign@elpa.gnu.org> (trust undefined) created at
  2020-04-26T22:05:02+0100 using RSA

and I've uploaded the contents of

  /home/eduardo/.emacs.d/elpa/archives/gnu/archive-contents

to:

  https://0x0.st/ieQc.txt

I also tried to run slight variants of the tests above with an emacs26
compiled from the git repo with:

  git checkout emacs-26.3
  ./autogen.sh
  ./configure
  make

and it also couldn't access ELPA if I ran it from my test user.

When I ran emacses using my default user ("edrx") and loading my
(HUUUGE) ~/.emacs file they didn't have any problems accesing ELPA and
MELPA, but I didn't perform many tests with them to discover what code
in my ~/.emacs was, huh, how do I say?, "fixing the bug".

  Thanks in advance =/,
    Eduardo Ochs
    http://angg.twu.net/emacsconf2019.html
    http://angg.twu.net/#eev