Subject: Please help - pine for VMS

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 11 Mar 1995 16:05:21 -0500

I've been trying to install the VMS version of PINE on an alpha for some
time now. The problem I am having involves creating folders. When
I try to send mail, I get a message that says:
	Folder "mymail" doesn't exist. Create? Y
	[Can't create mailbox SYSmymail: mailbox already exists]

When trying to create a folder named TMP, I get a message that says: 
	Can't create mailbox SYStmp: mailbox already exists

even though there is no such mailbox. I believe the problem has to do with
the assignment of the "folder-collection" variable. I've tried the suggestion 
of the README file that came with PINE, and tried reading the text at the 
HTTP site. All to no avail. If anyone who has had success with the installation
of PINE for vms could tell me how they specified the folder-collection path,
it would be greatly appreciated.

Lonnie Ray
Academic Computing
Long Island University
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From: Portia Shao <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Mar 1995 17:58:17 -0800 (PST)

> I've been trying to install the VMS version of PINE on an alpha for some

I assume this is the version from Israel?
but I believe the answer is still true.
In VMS MAIL you can not have empty folders, so there is no way you can 
just "create" a folder.

The only way to "create" a folder is to put a message in there.
There are several ways to do this, one is to copy/save a message there, 
another is to use an external utility which puts a dummy message in a 
folder and thus creating it. The second is what will be in PMDF's Pine 
3.91 implementation when you choose the "create folder" command.
The external utility works in the current PMDF's Pine 3.89 when you use 
fcc. (the external utility is part of PMDF and is not generally available)

> it would be greatly appreciated.

	/portia		[email-masked]

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From: [email-masked] (Alan J Flavell)
Date: Sun, 12 Mar 1995 00:00:16 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>
[email-masked] writes:
 
(presumably about Yehavi's VMS port of PINE - this is the third query
I've seen from your site but at no point has anyone mentioned exaclty
which package they are talking about, which version they are using,
nor which tcp/ip transport method they use.  On the VMS system I
am talking about, we use Yehavi's port of 3.91 with MULTINET).
 
>                                      I believe the problem has to do with
>HTTP site. All to no avail.
 
I agree that you get bizarre results if folder-collections is not
defined correctly, but once I had set it to the value laid down in
the README (i.e folder-collections=SYS/[] ) it worked fine on VAX/VMS.
 
I will check with my contact who's using it on DEC ALPHA on Monday
and let u know if he found anything different.
 
You have definitely got a MAIL.MAI file, haven't you?  People who
never used VMS MAIL before will not have this mail database.
He told me that he had to turn his VMS MAIL forwarding off and send
himself a mail to create his MAIL.MAI before his first success
with VMS PINE.
 
I'm sure you'll get it sorted...it works for us.
 
Perhaps you'd email your .PINERC (and PINE.CONF, if used) files
to me and I'll tell you if I see anything wrong.

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From: [email-masked] (Alan J Flavell)
Date: Sun, 12 Mar 1995 14:44:25 GMT

>The only way to "create" a folder is to put a message in there.
 
What you say is correct - but if I attempt to create an (empty)
folder by using the A(dd) command from the L(ist) screen, nothing
happens - it does not give me the error message that "lray" is
reporting.
 
As one can see by looking in VMS_MAIL.C, there are several
PINE commands that are not supported when addressed to local
mailboxes - not all of these limitations are mentioned in
the README.VMS.  The commands are still needed, since they could
be addressed to remote folder collections (but we are not dealing
with that situation here).
 
I repeat, the correct values for folder-collections and
default-fcc are stated in the README.VMS (I am posting this from
an EBCDIC-based mainframe with erratic representation of square
brackets so I'm worried about trying to type it in here.)
I got bizarre results (not too different from the symptoms
reported here) when they were not set up correctly.
 
>folder and thus creating it.
 
Yes, the VMS "MAIL" command could do that (unless you have set
it to FORWARD all messages).  But there is no need (apart from creating
the initial MAIL.MAI base if the user does not have one), because
VMS PINE is quite happy to S(ave) a message to a folder name that
does not exist, and will create it and add it to the folder list,
at least, that works for me.  (I suppose it's possible that there's
some problem that only occurs on DEC ALPHA Open/VMS and not on
VAX/VMS where I was installing it).
 
>>       Folder "mymail" doesn't exist. Create? Y
 
Just a minute, you say this happens when you try to _send_ a
mail.  Have you made sure to explicitly set
default-fcc=""
as required by the README.VMS?  The Fcc feature does not work under
VMS and has to be turned off like this.
 
I've made a few changes to my Web page, take a fresh look:
 
http://d1.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/vms-pine.html
 
good luck