Hi Paul,
On 1 Aug 2004 at 21:28, Paul Henrichsen spoke, thus:
> Hi, Jonathan or Dean. I was downloading my e-mail this evening via a
> network connection. It took forever to get the 433 messages on the server.
> I hope in 6.1 that this is much faster than over half an hour. I almost go
> to the end and was informed that the e-mail program could not find the file
> specified. After that, nothing happened. I pressed escape and exited and
> thought I'd start from wheer I left off. No such luck. Keysoft starts again
> from the beginning even though a check of my e-mail inbox told me there was
> 415 messages. Wouldn't it be smarter to delete the messages from the server
> as they are downloaded instead of waiting until the end? I am again
> downloading the same 443 messages and am currently stuck at message 21. I
> have been stuck at this same message the entire time I have been writing
> this one on my desktop computer. No matter how long I have waited, I am
> told I am stillat zero percent with a message size of 4,345. Progress beeps
> have now stopped with zero percent of the message received. There must be a
> better way to download e-mail. Delete each message from the server as they
> are downloaded, at least so you don't have to start from the beginning each
> time you download.
I know how you're feeling. I tried this trick with just over 1200
messages on my server while I was staying at my friends after Sight
Village. I did not elect to delete messages from the server, but I will
soon explain what you are seeing if you have.
First of all, the email database is stored in the "email folders.cdb" file
in \FlashDisk\Keylist . Since all of your mail is still on the server
(see next point, below), you can safely delete this file if you know that
you have no mail in your BrailleNote that is actually important, or that
you have downloaded in previous sessions. If you have, then you're going
to have to delete the downloaded messages yourself, manually, from the
folders. And if you believe me, it's going to take a very, very, very
long time as the database is slowly and painfully updated.
The BrailleNote is not really suited to storing large quantities of mail
or recovering from network interruptions, or even failing gracefully. Its
database technology for the email system and its networking code, at least
in version 5.1, is pretty tragic. You would do well to help the
BrailleNote along by doing server-side filtering, if you can; if you
can't, well, you're going to have to download all your mail all over
again, and just make sure there's room for it first.
To explain why your suggestion isn't feasible, I'm afraid, the problem
lies in the POP3 protocol. RFC 1939 requires that a client send the QUIT
command before the update state is entered and the maildrop is acted upon.
The server keeps a state table of deletions you have requested with the
dele command, but it only acts upon them when the quit command is sent,
and never otherwise - not even when a disconnection happens for some other
reason. Some POP3 services allow you to sin against this so-called
limitation and ignore the fact that the connection was closed by means
other than the quit command. However, the purpose of this standards-
enforced limitation is to ensure reliability of mail retrieval, and since
the standard does provide mechanisms for using the POP3 service as a semi-
permanent mail repository, there is really no reason why PulseData
shouldn't make a best effort to use them.
Unless you can reduce the amount of mail you have to download, there is
nothing more you can do. You can only do everything you can to keep the
connection between yourself and the POP3 server alive, and that requires
administration of the POP3 server. The minimum timeout, according to RFC
1939, is 10 minutes. Many sites sin against this, unfortunately, due to
heavy load, but increasing the timeout to assist the BrailleNote is a
start. Because the BrailleNote pauses for such inordinate lengths of
time, without quickly issuing a QUIT command as recommended by RFC 1939 in
cases of catastrophe as in disk full or resource unavailability
conditions, the net result is that the POP3 service will have to undo all
changes, shut the connection, and leave you with all the mail. When you
reconnect, of course, the mail is fresh, as if not downloaded. Since the
BrailleNote does not check with the server whether it has downloaded mail
it already has, as other clients do, perhaps using the provided RFC 1939
UIDL utility command or by calculating a hash of the mail against mail
already in the local repository, it simply goes right ahead and
redownloads, aggrivating your disk full condition, probably the reason why
it stopped in the first place. So, before starting again, make sure your
FlashDisk has the room for it.
Cheers,
Sabahattin
--
Thought for the day:
Communist (n): one who has given up all hope
of becoming a Capitalist.
Sabahattin Gucukoglu
Phone: +44 20 7,502-1615
Mobile: +44 7986 053399
http://www.sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/
Email/MSN: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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