On Tue, 18 Jul 2000 19:10:01 -0500, Pete Randolph wrote:
> I archived your letter about Inbox's reliance upon it's *.idx file.
> (....)
> There must be some details of your situation that I am missing. Can
> you give me more info?
>
This business of Inbox and the error message 'Cannot create index
file [path]\$IDX$cnm.IDX has two parts to it. At least, that's what I've
found by experimentation. Before saying what these two parts are, it
might be helpful to note that I use a RAMdisk as my temporary directory.
The RAMdisk is H:\ and I set AUTOEXEC.BAT to make a TEMP directory on
H:\. Then I put SET TEMP=H:\TEMP in AUTOEXEC.BAT and set Arachne to
cache local objects. Now to the Inbox problem:
The first part is this: If SET TEMP=H:\TEMP is correctly put into
AUTOEXEC.BAT but the directory H:\TEMP doesn't actually exist, then
when running mail and pressing 'I', you get the 'Cannot create....'
message. In addition, you'll find some spurious .HTM files created in
the ARACHNE directory.
If you then go back and create TEMP on H:\ so that SET TEMP=
points to a proper existing directory, you'd think that you'd have
fixed the problem. Unfortunately, the error page seems to stick in
cache, so you'll get it now for evermore, EVEN WHEN THE ORIGINAL
FAULT HAS BEEN FIXED!! The trick is to press DEL to remove the error
page from cache when it appears. Then press 'I' again and the inbox
index should display.
The second part is this: If SET TEMP= hasn't been stated but Arachne
has been set to cache local objects (Options - Local settings page),
then, when running mail and pressing 'I', you'll get a list of messages.
However, clicking on a message will bring it up BUT two things seem tyo
happen. Most noticeably, instead of the usual set of buttons at the top
of the message, you'll get a wide button labelled '<<Main message', in
addition to the '<<', 'INDEX' and '>>' buttons and also 'Forward' and
'Reply' buttons. Interestingly, you CAN sometimes (but not, it seems,
consistently) get 'Message 0 of -1' showing on the same line as the
buttons at the top of the mail window. Sometimes when clicking on a
message, you'll get an error message saying that the URL can't be found.
You'll once again find spurious files created in the ARACHNE directory.
I remember that, several weeks - or was it months - ago, Clarence
Verge had problems of this sort. I can't remember if his symptoms were
exactly the same as what I've recorded here, but it may be worth asking
him what he had and how he fixed it, just to see if there's a further
angle on this that needs to be covered in the FAQ.
Hope this is of some use. Let me know if you want me to experiment
further.
All the best,
Ron.
