Subject: READONLY INBOX Problem

From: [email-masked] (David W Vaklyes)
Date: 15 Dec 1994 14:17:27 GMT

Six days ago pine started acting strangely on the machine at my work
(SGI Indy, IRIX 5.2, Pine 3.90 them, 3.91 now)

Whenever anyone starts pine, the INBOX is opened READONLY, and only one
message is listed, titled /usr/mail/juser, which when opened contains
all the current messages.

The documentation suggests that it is a problem with the locking mechanism.
I looked in /tmp (and /usr/tmp) for lock files of the form
./usr/mail/juser - but there are no files of this type.

No other copies of pine are running on the system, and I do not know of
any system changes made that day (although something apparently was
changed)

My users are being forced to use "Mail" and they are not happy. What am
I missing? HELP!

Thanks,

Dave Vaklyes
[email-masked]

---

From: Terry Gray <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Dec 1994 09:08:08 -0800 (PST)

Dave,
I'll resist asking "What changed six days ago?"... :)

The symptoms suggest that Pine is not recognizing the folder as a 
legitimate mailbox, so it's opening it as an arbitrary file.

Take a careful look at the mailboxes (especially the first "From " message 
separator, if you're using Bky mail format) and compare with a folder 
than Pine can successfully open.  Also look for an extraneous newline at 
the beginning, or for a null anywhere in the folder.  (For example, is it 
possible a bogus message with a null in it was delivered six days ago to 
everyone having the problem?)

Please let us know what you discover.

-teg