Package: xemacs21-basesupport Version: 2005.03.07-1, 2006.05.10-1 Severity: grave Justification: causes non-serious data loss Tags: sarge, etch
The MUA vm from xemacs21 (21.4.17-1 on Sarge, 21.4.19-2 on Etch, too) does not report anything if mails which should be sent out are rejected by /usr/sbin/sendmail, e.g. because of their size, even on a virgin account. The user does not have any clue, that the mail didn't go out and wonders why nobody has received the mail. Example / How to reproduce: Start xemacs under a virgin user account. Type M-x vm. Type m in the newly popped up window. Set recipient and subject in the again newly popped up window. Type M-x vm-mime-attach-file and attach one or more files so that in their sum they are bigger than the local MTA is configured to accept. In our case the limit of the local postfix is (IIRC by default) set to 10 MB and we attached an appropriately big tar.gz. Type C-c C-c to send the mail out. The window closes and postfix from Sarge writes to its log file: Dec 20 17:28:49 malfoy postfix/postdrop[30418]: warning: uid=4977: File too large Dec 20 17:28:49 malfoy postfix/sendmail[30417]: fatal: xtaran(4977): Message file too big Postfix from Etch writes instead: Dec 20 17:53:42 ankara postfix/postdrop[31933]: warning: uid=4977: Illegal seek Dec 20 17:53:42 ankara postfix/sendmail[31932]: fatal: xtaran(4977): queue file write error The user who sent the mail did not get any notice about that and therefore doesn't know he just lost that mail. It's even worse on Etch: There vm claims to have sent out the mail by naming a buffer "sent mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]" (or whereever you planned to send that mail). On the other hand, this means that you have less serious data loss on Etch. :-) To check that postfix did not only log the message to the error log, I tried to send out a similar mail using /usr/sbin/sendmail directly (on Sarge): $ /usr/sbin/sendmail [EMAIL PROTECTED] < 20-MB-Test-Mail.txt postdrop: warning: uid=4977: File too large sendmail: fatal: xtaran(4977): Message file too big $ echo $? 69 $ On Etch /usr/sbin/sendmail returns with exit code 75. I have looked through the vm variables and functions but haven't found any which configures how to care about sendmail's return values or messages (as e.g. mutt does). It also doesn't seem to have any customisation via M-x customize RET mail. -- System Information for Etch: Debian Release: 4.0 APT prefers testing APT policy: (500, 'testing') Architecture: i386 (i686) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash Kernel: Linux 2.6.18-3-686 Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968) Versions of packages xemacs21-basesupport depends on: ii perl 5.8.8-6.1 Larry Wall's Practical Extraction xemacs21-basesupport recommends no packages. -- System Information for Sarge: Debian Release: 3.1 Architecture: i386 (i686) Kernel: Linux 2.4.33.2-1-dphys-k8-smp-64gb Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968) Versions of packages xemacs21-basesupport depends on: ii perl 5.8.4-8sarge5 Larry Wall's Practical Extraction -- no debconf information
