SOT: Pan newsreader problem

It says invalid path name even though that is where it's installed. I tried it with double quotes because of the space but it still didn't like it.

Commenting on my comment, I found 0.144 Win version, completely uninstalled

though I do not use that software, even a small update can spoil things by changes to the registry. I always keep a daily backup of the registries using erunt and often rolling the registry back a day or so fixes such things. Of course it might be a change in a shared dll that windows did, but you should be able to see this as a smoking gun in the list of software updates. Brian

Well as you have discovered, it aint!

Why on earth would you want to use windows except when you had no choice?

He isn't using Mint with pan...

The cd (change directory) does not typically need quotes. You should be able to use quotes if you wish.

cd /d C:\Program Files\pan.rebelbase.org\Pan

You press carriage return (the Enter key) after the attempt.

I test this, and it works too.

cd /d "C:\Program Files\pan.rebelbase.org\Pan"

The execution of the command is on a separate line, like this.

pan

or you can type

pan.exe

I type the EXE like that, as a styling thing, so that a person can see I'm not engaging a script or anything of that nature. And what I am launching is an EXE executable.

Since it does not appear Pan will be cooperating and the above instructions are largely useless...

we can use Sysinternals Process Monitor and ETW trace. ReadFile and CreateFile (a kind of file stat operation) will give a decent trace.

No, your eyes should not light up when you see on the page that a "Linux version" of procmon is available. It's a shabby strace substitute. I do not know what the real disposition is, of any attempt to add ETW-style tracing to Linux. They really should not mislead people this way, until a true equivalent becomes available. I use strace, and it is not anywhere near as good as Procmon.

And to put Procmon in its place, the ETW spectrum is wider than Procmon. Procmon lacks many parsers for things like network events. With some additional effort, they could have mixed packet traces into the file too, but that is missing (this would likely conflict with the "Jump To" feature).

The guy who wrote that, was an "outsider" to Microsoft at the time, and the progress made is pretty amazing for such an effort. I would not say that ProcMon was "pure reverse engineering", but neither would I say all the materials needed were handed on a silver platter. By the way, the average rank-and-file MSFT employee does not like the guy, because he makes them look bad :-) There is actually a very small team that works on Sysinternals tools, and the guy has a buddy who works in the mines all day, fixing stuff. But as dev class people go, that guy has a pretty well rounded skill set. The pinheads at Microsoft should fear him.

Paul

I appreciate your (lengthy!) advice Paul, but as it's now working OK with an older version I'll observe the maxim 'if it ain't broke don't fix it'.

'Cos most of the time it works without having to write a book's worth of scripts!

Noting (from my W7 system) that Pan seems to have regular problems with my Logitech M570 ball mouse, when it screws up the display and needs a restart.

Pan 0.140 on W7 doesn't have any comparable problems.

Memo to self: check which drivers are being used. Memo to self #2: look out an old school mouse to see if that helps. Touch pad seems fine, but I run my laptop with the lid closed.

Cheers

Dave R

It's interesting, the sheer number of DLLs that program uses.

And it does do some strange things, none of which should break anything.

If you needed to debug it, you might need gdb rather than MSFT WinDbg as a debugger. That might have some impact on attempts to use other crash-dump-viewers.

So that pastebin thing I prepared, that was so you could compare the behavior of your broken one (how far along it gets before terminating), to my trace. Downloading the file and opening it in Notepad, it does not look quite as bad as the web view looks.

But by all means, if a previous version fixes it, that's the right answer. The developer will eventually fix it.

Paul

Unfortunately with Pan this is not a given. Especially the Windows version which in the past has been the red haired step child of the Linux version. Things may have picked up, but the developer support has been patchy in the past, and all credit to those who have given scarce time to maintain it.

Cheers

Dave R

Probably worth mentioning that Windows Subsystem For Linux 2, can now run GUI apps as well. So you can (probably[1]) run the Linux version transparently on the windows desktop.

I was looking for a reason to try that!

Cheers

Dave R

I have them loaded, for picture taking. But not set up for usage.

And it does not appear that Windows 10 will ever work as well as Windows 11 at this. A purposeful decision by someone when it could equally exist on both. You can have bash shell on Win10 if you want to use "grep" but not "firefox". Whereas Win11 bash can have grep or Firefox or Pan for that matter.

The original WSLg preview was pretty bad (if someone happened to test it, the graphics moped on the screen). The graphics now, work "almost properly", but you'll soon get used to it.

Paul