> On Mon, Jun 04, 2001 at 12:42:20PM -0400, Homer Wilson Smith wrote:
> > Since most of the from line errors result from corrupted
> > mailboxes, where the TOP of the mailbox is missing part
> > of the mail or has added blank lines, will this make sure
> > that that first message will have a From line even if half
> > the message is gone?
>
> This is the solution to a different problem, due to how procmail was
> being used to deliver mail. If your mailboxes are getting corrupted as
> you describe, you really need to find the source of that problem and
> address that. (First place to start - turn off server mode; second
> place - figure out if your programs are all using the same lock
> mechanism.)
OK. We are running server mode because copy mode is just
too slow.
However we are running qpopper 2.52 and procmail 1.13.1 both
of which I understand are old. Linux 2.0.38
We have never gotten corrupted mail within the mailbox,
it is always at the top of the mailbox, first mail in it. Most
usually it is a single blank line that merely needs to be erased.
But sometimes for a large binary it just starts in the middle
of the binary and we have to delete it.
I imagine if the From line was missing in the middle
of the mailbox that we would never really know as the end user
would simply get two pieces of mail in one.
Users are not running shell just some popper client, often
reading mail every 10 minutes. They get a large binary and wham
it goes in bad and they can't get their mail from there on out.
It happens about once a month on 2500 users.
I been thinking of how to kludge this with a monitor on the popper
log files, it sees the "can't read from lines" message and goes and fixes
the mail file itself as best it can.
I know I should upgrade to 4.03, but the number of bugs
being reported here is scary. This is a production system and
we need mail to work perfectly. :) No insult at all intended,
I LOVE popper and procmail and linux and everyone who has helped
bring all this about, I am but a worm in the scheme of things. But
my customers none the less hate mail problems. Since this is the
ONLY problem we are having, I would rather kludge a fix rather than
upgrade to a whole new unknown bad of tricks.
Thanks Homer
