[bug?] emacs interface - some mark read tag changes may have failed

[bug?] emacs interface - some mark read tag changes may have failed

[Giovanni Biscuolo]

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Hello,

I use notmuch via emacs since long ago (at least 3 years) and all is
working great

...except today I received a message (reply) that emacs-notmuch have
problems showing, if I try to open it (press return on the message in
the notmuch-search buffer) it hangs forever and I can just interrupt
the notmuch-show command using CTRL-g; after I press CTRL-g I get this
text in the buffer:

  [some mark read tag changes may have failed]

I launched emacs with:

  emacs -Q --eval "(require 'notmuch)"

If I

  notmuch show --format=raw id:26ee39e3-fa3a-52f3-1a3f-0d222e2613f8@di.unimi.it

in a terminal I get the whole message with no errors, so I think it
should be an emacs interface error

how can I debug this kind of errors?

is there a way i can reply to the affected email dumping the raw message in
a text file and using it with emacs as if it's a "normal message"?

Thanks! Gio'

-- 
Giovanni Biscuolo

Xelera IT Infrastructures

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Re: [bug?] emacs interface - some mark read tag changes may have failed

[David Bremner]

Giovanni Biscuolo <g@xelera.eu> writes:

> after I press CTRL-g I get this text in the buffer:
>   [some mark read tag changes may have failed]

This is essentially notmuch-emacs complaining that it was interrupted,
so not really telling us about the underlying issue.

>
> I launched emacs with:
>
>   emacs -Q --eval "(require 'notmuch)"
>

To be honest, I'm a bit surprised this works. How does emacs find
notmuch.el in this case? Or did you maybe mean emacs -q?

> how can I debug this kind of errors?
>

I suggest using M-x toggle-debug-on-quit, so that you get a traceback.

It may help to specify versions of notmuch and emacs when reporting problems.

> is there a way i can reply to the affected email dumping the raw message in
> a text file and using it with emacs as if it's a "normal message"?
>

If you can get the text you want, then you can copy and paste it into a
message composition buffer (e.g. from C-x m). notmuch show --format=text
may offer your best bet of recovering message text.

d

Re: [bug?] emacs interface - some mark read tag changes may have failed

[Giovanni Biscuolo]

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Hello David,

thank you for your help!

I found a pettern in how the problems affects me

The message is S/MIME signed:

  Content-Type: multipart/signed; protocol="application/pkcs7-signature"; micalg=sha-256; boundary="------------ms060701080209070400040907"

I searched all messages having mimetype application/pkcs7-signature and
found that I can read almost every one of them /except/ some of them
have the very same behaviour

Some of the S/MIME signed messages do display correctly /but/ after some
delay, others display immediatly, some never display and I have to
interrupt (CTRL-g)

There is also an old signed message (2019-07-23) from the same sender
I'm /sure/ I was able to read at the time, but now I'm not able to open
it anymore (in Emacs)

David Bremner <david@tethera.net> writes:

> Giovanni Biscuolo <g@xelera.eu> writes:
>
>> after I press CTRL-g I get this text in the buffer:
>>   [some mark read tag changes may have failed]
>
> This is essentially notmuch-emacs complaining that it was interrupted,
> so not really telling us about the underlying issue.

OK, I understand now

>> I launched emacs with:
>>
>>   emacs -Q --eval "(require 'notmuch)"
>>
> To be honest, I'm a bit surprised this works. How does emacs find
> notmuch.el in this case? Or did you maybe mean emacs -q?

I'm using Guix to install Emacs and all related packages, AFAIU Guix
loads all the needed libraries anyway; to be sure startes Emacs in an
isolated container [1] with only emacs and emacs-notmuch as available
packages, exposing (i.e. maiking it read-only in the container) my
maildir to be able to read messages and notmuch database; this is what I
did:

  guix shell --container --network --expose=/var/mail/giovanni=/var/mail/giovanni emacs emacs-notmuch --preserve='^DISPLAY$' -- emacs -Q --eval "(require 'notmuch)"

...and opening it this way I was finally able to open the message!

The visible difference I find between the two instances of emacs - my
default one and the one started in a container - is that in my default
one Emacs is verifying signatures ("Good signature by" in many S/MIME
signed messages, not all) but the one in the container is not doing the
signature verification, I can see it comparing how the same message is
displayed in both instances

>> how can I debug this kind of errors?
>>
>
> I suggest using M-x toggle-debug-on-quit, so that you get a traceback.
>
> It may help to specify versions of notmuch and emacs when reporting
> problems.

Thanks, I'll try to debug-on-quit as soon as I find some time to stop my
daemon and testing this issue.

>> is there a way i can reply to the affected email dumping the raw message in
>> a text file and using it with emacs as if it's a "normal message"?
>>
>
> If you can get the text you want, then you can copy and paste it into a
> message composition buffer (e.g. from C-x m). notmuch show --format=text
> may offer your best bet of recovering message text.

Oh yes, you are right... but now I've seen I can start Emacs that way
(isolated container) I have a better workaround :-)


Thank you very much!  Gio'


[1] https://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/html_node/Invoking-guix-shell.html

-- 
Giovanni Biscuolo

Xelera IT Infrastructures

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Re: [bug?] emacs interface - some mark read tag changes may have failed

[David Bremner]

Giovanni Biscuolo <g@xelera.eu> writes:

> Hello David,
>
> thank you for your help!
>
> I found a pettern in how the problems affects me
>
> The message is S/MIME signed:
>

without checking all the details, sounds like you need the hint in

        https://nmbug.notmuchmail.org/nmweb/show/87y402yx5d.fsf%40tesseract.cs.unb.ca

Unfortunately gpg upstream disagrees with dkg and I that this behaviour
is a bug.

d

Re: [bug?] emacs interface - some mark read tag changes may have failed

[Giovanni Biscuolo]

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Hello David,

David Bremner <david@tethera.net> writes:

> Giovanni Biscuolo <g@xelera.eu> writes:

[...]

>> The message is S/MIME signed:
>>
>
> without checking all the details, sounds like you need the hint in
>
>         https://nmbug.notmuchmail.org/nmweb/show/87y402yx5d.fsf%40tesseract.cs.unb.ca

it sounds the same issue: I added "disable-crl-checks" to
~/.gnupg/dirmngr.conf, restarted dirmngr with "gpgconf --kill
dirmngr" and "gpgconf --launch dirmngr"... but the issue was the same

Is it possible it war Tor related? I realized that my tor service was
stuck:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---

 Tried for 125 seconds to get a connection to [scrubbed]:80. Giving up.

--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

So I stopped the service and I was able to see the message with a good
signature verification

I tried both with and without "disable-crl-checks" in dirmngr config but
nothing was different AFAIU

The real change was when I stopped the stuck Tor service.

Now I restarted Tor (and it's not stuck anymore) and all is working fine
again.

...guess I should check why (apparently) my gpg is using Tor :-)

Maybe gnupg/dirmngr uses Tor by default if it finds a Tor service on the
machine?

Any idea?

[...]

Thanks! Gio'

-- 
Giovanni Biscuolo

Xelera IT Infrastructures

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Re: [bug?] emacs interface - some mark read tag changes may have failed

[David Bremner]

Giovanni Biscuolo <g@xelera.eu> writes:

> Now I restarted Tor (and it's not stuck anymore) and all is working fine
> again.
>
> ...guess I should check why (apparently) my gpg is using Tor :-)
>
> Maybe gnupg/dirmngr uses Tor by default if it finds a Tor service on the
> machine?

There is some discussion about tor in the related gnupg issue

      https://dev.gnupg.org/T3348

The documentation says

    The default is to use Tor if it is available on startup or after
    reloading dirmngr

There is also "no-use-tor", but like disable-crl-checks there are
security/privacy implications to using that.

Re: [bug?] emacs interface - some mark read tag changes may have failed

[Giovanni Biscuolo]

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Hi,

David Bremner <david@tethera.net> writes:

[...]

>> Maybe gnupg/dirmngr uses Tor by default if it finds a Tor service on the
>> machine?
>
> There is some discussion about tor in the related gnupg issue
>
>       https://dev.gnupg.org/T3348

thank you for the bug reference

> The documentation says
>
>     The default is to use Tor if it is available on startup or after
>     reloading dirmngr
>
> There is also "no-use-tor", but like disable-crl-checks there are
> security/privacy implications to using that.

i should have read the documentation before, now I understand: thanks!

in my case, there is no doubt the S/MIME signature verification was
stuck because Tor was stuck, when I restarted Tor all was fine again

Happy hacking! Gio'

-- 
Giovanni Biscuolo

Xelera IT Infrastructures

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