Newbie question - Thoth unexpectedly quits?

In article <061120032345392081%nadeama@mac.com>, Martin Nadeau
<nadeama DeleteThis @mac.com> wrote:

> If nothing I've mentioned helps, try contacting the author about your
> problem to see if he can help you work it out. His email address is in
> the User Guide.

I've done all you suggest, and more. I also searched the web and
newsgroups with Google to see if anyone else had posted about
this, with no useful results. I'm unwilling to believe that I'm
the only one who has experienced this, so it was my hope
to solve this in a public forum, rather than by private e-mail,
since I have seen other messages in various newsgroups indicating
that Thoth was not working for others.

P.S.
I used an invalid e-mail after reading here and elsewhere that
those who used valid e-mail addresses were subject to an e-mail
spam/virus attack a month or two ago. Yes, a Windows virus,
of course, but clogging Mac mailboxes can also be a serious
problem, even if they aren't affected by the virus.

P.P.S.
The Apple Help guide wasn't any help. They don't even
acknowledge the phrase "Application has unexpectedly quit"
AFAIK. Nor do I wish to do a Clean Install if Thoth is the
only instability in my system.

In article <061120032345392081%nadeama@mac.com>, Martin Nadeau
<nadeama RemoveThis @mac.com> wrote:


> If nothing I've mentioned helps, try contacting the author about your
> problem to see if he can help you work it out.

I've done all you suggest, and more. I also searched the web and
newsgroups with Google to see if anyone else had posted about
this, with no useful results. I'm unwilling to believe that I'm
the only one who has experienced this, so it was my hope
to solve this in a public forum, rather than by private e-mail,
since I have seen other messages in various newsgroups indicating
that Thoth was not working for others.

P.S.
I used an invalid e-mail after reading here and elsewhere that
those who used valid e-mail addresses were subject to an e-mail
spam/virus attack a month or two ago. Yes, a Windows virus,
of course, but clogging Mac mailboxes can also be a serious
problem, even if they aren't affected by the virus.

P.P.S.
The Apple Help guide wasn't any help. They don't even
acknowledge the phrase "Application has unexpectedly quit"
AFAIK. Nor do I wish to do a Clean Install if Thoth is the
only instability in my system.

In article <061120032345392081%nadeama@mac.com>, Martin Nadeau
<nadeama.RemoveThis@mac.com> wrote:


> If nothing I've mentioned helps, try contacting the author about your
> problem to see if he can help you work it out.

I've done all you suggest, and more. I also searched the web and
newsgroups with Google to see if anyone else had posted about
this, with no useful results. I'm unwilling to believe that I'm
the only one who has experienced this, so it was my hope
to solve this in a public forum, rather than by private e-mail,
since I have seen other messages in various newsgroups indicating
that Thoth was not working for others.

P.S.
I used an invalid e-mail after reading here and elsewhere that
those who used valid e-mail addresses were subject to an e-mail
spam/virus attack a month or two ago. Yes, a Windows virus,
of course, but clogging Mac mailboxes can also be a serious
problem, even if they aren't affected by the virus.

P.P.S.
The Apple Help guide wasn't any help. They don't even
acknowledge the phrase "Application has unexpectedly quit"
AFAIK. Nor do I wish to do a Clean Install if Thoth is the
only instability in my system.

In article <061120032154209290%reply@newsgroup.please>, fred simms
<reply DeleteThis @newsgroup.please> wrote:

> In article <061120032345392081%nadeama@mac.com>, Martin Nadeau
> <nadeama DeleteThis @mac.com> wrote:
>
>
> > If nothing I've mentioned helps, try contacting the author about your
> > problem to see if he can help you work it out.
>
> I've done all you suggest, and more. I also searched the web and
> newsgroups with Google to see if anyone else had posted about
> this, with no useful results. I'm unwilling to believe that I'm
> the only one who has experienced this, so it was my hope
> to solve this in a public forum, rather than by private e-mail,
> since I have seen other messages in various newsgroups indicating
> that Thoth was not working for others.

It might still be worth emailing Brian with the details of your problem
and details of your system to try and figure out what's going on. It's
not only frustrating for you to have an application that should work
(and that does work for many), but it could eventually help out others
in the same situation if you figure out what the problem is. It's
certainly not much fun troubleshooting those types of problems though,
that's for sure.

> P.S.
> I used an invalid e-mail after reading here and elsewhere that
> those who used valid e-mail addresses were subject to an e-mail
> spam/virus attack a month or two ago. Yes, a Windows virus,
> of course, but clogging Mac mailboxes can also be a serious
> problem, even if they aren't affected by the virus.

Yes, that's very wise. However, you have not only entered the invalid
address in the address field, but also in the Reply-To field. A
Reply-To field is usually only used if you do want to indicate that
you'd like to receive replies to a specific address (often an address
that would be different from the address entered in the newsreader's
preferences). If you don't even want to receive email replies, or don't
care one way or another, you should leave the Reply-To field blank,
because some newsreaders (like Thoth) will give a system beep or some
other warning to indicate that a message you're replying to has a
Reply-To address, and it's just weird to receive a reminder warning
about an address that doesn't exist.

--
Martin Nadeau

In article <061120031207543676%reply@newsgroup.please>,
fred simms <reply.RemoveThis@newsgroup.please> wrote:

> I think Thoth 1.7.1 is what I need, but I get "Application has
> unexpectedly quit" when trying to open binaries groups with large
> numbers of posts, or when trying to download a list of 10 or 20
> binary parts.

Thoth, both the ppc and x versions, crashes regularly on me, on all the
Macs I've tried.

I forwarded info to the author. His reply to me was:

"Per the User Guide, it is suggested to NOT enable
the parts cache."

Did that, still crashy. Emailed more info but got no further replies
from Clarke.

FWIW... I have found a "technique" that seems to make Thoth more stable
when dealing with large binary groups. It does not make Thoth 100%
crash free, but it does seem to eliminate the "reliable" crashes:

0. Launch Thoth.
1. Pause all the queues.
2. Open your newsgroups, and queue stuff for downloading.
3. Quit Thoth.
4. From the folder that contains the news server's data,
delete these files:
Thoth Article Cache
Thoth Header Cache
Thoth Parts Cache
Be sure to NOT delete Thoth Transfers !
5. re-Launch Thoth and run the downloads.
6. Quit Thoth.
7. Delete those same files, this time including the Transfers file too!

HTH,
- Dan.
--
- Psychoceramic Emeritus
- South Jersey, USA, Earth

In article <081120030032389053%nadeama@mac.com>, Martin Nadeau
<nadeama.DeleteThis@mac.com> wrote:


> Yes, that's very wise. However, you have not only entered the invalid
> address in the address field, but also in the Reply-To field.

As you may have guessed, I'm a newbie as far as using
Thoth or OS X. Not exactly sure how to do the various
fields in Thoth, seems like it's scattered throughout
the various interfaces or files. Anyway, thanks for
your help. Reluctant to e-mail Brian, since I don't
want to quote the entire manual to him as steps I've
already tried, and he wasn't able to help the other
guys with my problem. It's probably some quirk of
OS X that's out of his control, like Thoth crashing when
I would just try to open this group. I wasn't ever able
to use thoth 1.7.1x for more than 10 minutes without
a crash.
The crash logs always start with
Exception: X_Bad access
Codes: Kern Invalid address.
So I'm thinking that this would mean a bad RAM (hardware
issue). However, I don't want to have to do a clean install,
turn my machine over to the techs, get new RAM to replace
the Apple-installed RAM if Thoth is the only problem.

In article <bor63b$1f8rr7$1@ID-124490.news.uni-berlin.de>, Dan Cottler
<darmok.DeleteThis@punkass.com> wrote:

> I forwarded info to the author. His reply to me was:
>
> "Per the User Guide, it is suggested to NOT enable
> the parts cache."
>
> Did that, still crashy. Emailed more info but got no further replies
> from Clarke.
>
> FWIW... I have found a "technique" that seems to make Thoth more stable
> when dealing with large binary groups. It does not make Thoth 100%
> crash free, but it does seem to eliminate the "reliable" crashes:
>
> 0. Launch Thoth.
> 1. Pause all the queues.
> 2. Open your newsgroups, and queue stuff for downloading.
> 3. Quit Thoth.
> 4. From the folder that contains the news server's data,
> delete these files:
> Thoth Article Cache
> Thoth Header Cache
> Thoth Parts Cache
> Be sure to NOT delete Thoth Transfers !
> 5. re-Launch Thoth and run the downloads.
> 6. Quit Thoth.
> 7. Delete those same files, this time including the Transfers file too!

Yes, I tried that, along with uninstalling and reinstalling Thoth. It
would crash with nothing in the queue, it would crash trying to open
a newsgroup (e.g. this one), it would crash trying to start up. I
suppose I could copy-n-paste the entire manual and e-mail it to Brian
with the preface that I did all these things and many more, like
toggling xover on or off, or shutting down other processes in case
Thoth was unstable if too many
other processes were running. But the parts cache - it's disabled by
default, so who's going to mess that up? I think
it's a problem with my machine, carbon and Thoth 1.7.1x that
is not reproducible elsewhere. But I wish you luck. Maybe if you
e-mailed Brian one of your crash logs, he could tell you something
about that.

In article <111120031406522348%reply@newsgroup.please>, fred
<reply.TakeThisOut@newsgroup.please> wrote:

> In article <081120030032389053%nadeama@mac.com>, Martin Nadeau
> <nadeama.TakeThisOut@mac.com> wrote:
>
>
> > Yes, that's very wise. However, you have not only entered the invalid
> > address in the address field, but also in the Reply-To field.
>
> As you may have guessed, I'm a newbie as far as using
> Thoth or OS X. Not exactly sure how to do the various
> fields in Thoth, seems like it's scattered throughout
> the various interfaces or files.

That's okay, nothing wrong with being a Thoth newbie!

In your case, what I believe you've done is you filled in the Reply-To
field in your Default Personality (or whatever Personality you use to
post to this group).

To correct it, just select "Open Personality" from the File menu,
delete anything you may have written in the Reply-To field, and save.
Your Reply-To field should now be permanently empty.

Oops... I just noticed you seem to have corrected it already.

> Anyway, thanks for
> your help. Reluctant to e-mail Brian, since I don't
> want to quote the entire manual to him as steps I've
> already tried, and he wasn't able to help the other
> guys with my problem. It's probably some quirk of
> OS X that's out of his control, like Thoth crashing when
> I would just try to open this group. I wasn't ever able
> to use thoth 1.7.1x for more than 10 minutes without
> a crash.
> The crash logs always start with
> Exception: X_Bad access
> Codes: Kern Invalid address.
> So I'm thinking that this would mean a bad RAM (hardware
> issue). However, I don't want to have to do a clean install,
> turn my machine over to the techs, get new RAM to replace
> the Apple-installed RAM if Thoth is the only problem.

It's too bad because I know this can work. I had it working well under
Jaguar, and now it's working just as well under Panther.

I've just noticed from your headers that you're using Thoth 1.5.1. Is
this a version you went back to because it's less crash prone? If so,
it could perhaps help Brian to know about this so he can check the
changes that were implemented between 1.5.1 and 1.7.1 and pinpoint
what's causing that later version to crash on your system.

Also, do you have any "hacks" installed, like "Application Enhancer",
or any software that has installed a kernel extension in your System
folder? This could also possibly cause problems.

Did you send the crash logs to Brian? Maybe that could help also.

Apart from that, I really am out of ideas. It certainly would be nice
if we could get you up and going...

--
Martin Nadeau

In article <111120031417280611%reply@newsgroup.please>,
fred <reply DeleteThis @newsgroup.please> wrote:

> Yes, I tried that, along with uninstalling and reinstalling Thoth.
> It would crash with nothing in the queue, it would crash trying to
> open a newsgroup (e.g. this one), it would crash trying to start up.
> I suppose I could copy-n-paste the entire manual and e-mail it to
> Brian with the preface that I did all these things and many more,
> like toggling xover on or off, or shutting down other processes in
> case Thoth was unstable if too many other processes were running.
> But the parts cache - it's disabled by default, so who's going to
> mess that up? I think it's a problem with my machine, carbon and
> Thoth 1.7.1x that is not reproducible elsewhere. But I wish you
> luck. Maybe if you e-mailed Brian one of your crash logs, he could
> tell you something about that.

I've already emailed my crash logs to him. You should email yours.
Skip quoting the manual; his support "technique" is so minimalistic, it
will just make him ignore your email altogether.

Have you tried MT-NewsWatcher?

- Dan.
--
- Psychoceramic Emeritus
- South Jersey, USA, Earth

Dan Cottler <darmok DeleteThis @punkass.com> wrote:

> I've already emailed my crash logs to him. You should email yours.
> Skip quoting the manual; his support "technique" is so minimalistic,
> it will just make him ignore your email altogether.

Who would give help to someone that sent them the whole manual and said
"I did this"? Saying, you've read the manual and pointing out specific
things in it that you've tried, that would be useful, but clogging
their mailbox with a useless copy of the manual, would be just annoying
at best.

--
J.B. Moreno