Ken, > Exactly HOW many messages are in mhe-index?
exactly ---- bash archlinux (master): {49536} find ~/MHE-INDEX/ -type f | wc 173477 173477 7838026 ---- but, is that that many? in my overall Mail directory ---- bash archlinux (master): {49516} find ~/Mail/ -type f | wc 1499737 1499739 63526598 ---- i.e., an order of magnitude more. nevertheless, if i put (what is now) ~/MHE-INDEX back under ~/Mail, i get the very large malloc failure. hmm... bingo. i'm sitting in ~/Mail/MHE-INDEX: ---- bash archlinux (master): {49603} ls -a 74600607886815/ ./ ../ .mhe_index bash archlinux (master): {49605} mkdir ~/BAD-MHE-INDEX bash archlinux (master): {49606} mv 74600607886815/ !$ mv 74600607886815/ ~/BAD-MHE-INDEX bash archlinux (master): {49607} flist -all | wc 181 1629 12308 bash archlinux (master): {49608} mv ~/BAD-MHE-INDEX/74600607886815/ . bash archlinux (master): {49609} flist -all | wc flist: malloc failed, size wanted: 9207885440 0 0 0 ---- it seems that at some point i had done a search for 74600607886815 (your basic "magic number" :). mh-e, i guess, had created a directory with that number as its name (it uses the search term to name subfolders under the normal mhe-index folder). and, i guess, flist decided that (under the ~/Mail/MHE-INDEX folder) was a message number? does that make sense? i guess mh-e could not create such subfolders with names consisting only of decimal integers (i have some hexadecimal-named folders which don't seem to give a problem). or, i could not search for such. or, maybe flist (or, nmh in general?) could not think that a directory was a message? cheers, Greg