Subject: procmail'n'pine oddness

From: Offissa Pupp <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 12:54:27 -0400

Something odd I've been reflexively working around for several months now,
to wit: procmail interacting oddly with pine on a particular platform.

On a certain linux box, the two interact *nearly* seamlessly -- procmail
filters, inspects, and delivers, and pine periodically polls my system
inbox as well as whatever local box I'm reading to tell me if/when new
mail has arrived.  Mail comes in several messages at a time, locking all
seems to work, etc. 

On a certain SunOS 4.1.4 box, pine chokes and dies when it discovers that
procmail has touched the box it's reading.  "UNEXPECTED CHANGES TO
MAILBOX," it says in its inimitable all caps way.  "(try restarting):???"

peeping procmail's log, I find that procmail hasn't seemed to have a
problem:

[see appendix A]

and indeed, when I restart pine, everything seems hunky dory.  

The aforementioned linux box has performed this stunt maybe 2 times in the
past 8 months.  The SunOS box does it hourly.

My first thought: Permissions'n'umasks!  But that wasn't it.  I'm 027, my
.procmailrc says 027, all the files concerned are correctly owned.

My second thought: file locking!  But giving procmail explicit lockfiles
didn't seem to change anything.  (still could be that pine objects to
having its files locked, even briefly, but it would be totally new
behavior to me...)  In addition, the fact that as pine tells me to restart
its own internal indexing has gotten badly munged makes me think that it's
something much more insidious. 

So I turn on pine's built-in debugging.  (read: built-in oversharing, on
demand.)  

[see appendix B]

So I'm still not sure what's causing this, and I guess this whole
overlong letter boils down to this:

Anyone got a clue on why this might be happening?  Is it just SunOS?  Am I
nuts?

A

p.s. my other question is why certain mail-agents (Eudora in
particular) put four ^A's at the end of their messages, but that's a
problem for a different letter, I think.

--
 guilt is a broken hand                                  adam hirsch
 slapping the water.  -FD Reeve                          [email-masked]

============================================================
[appendix A]

procmail: [26210] Fri Apr 11 09:25:03 1997
procmail: No match on "^Subject.*(urgent|immediat|emergenc).*"
procmail: Match on "foo.com"
procmail: Locking "/users/adam/mail/foo.lock"
procmail: Assigning "LASTFOLDER=foo"
procmail: Opening "foo"
procmail: Acquiring kernel-lock
procmail: [26210] Fri Apr 11 09:25:04 1997
procmail: Unlocking "/users/adam/mail/foo.lock"
>From [email-masked]  Fri Apr 11 09:25:03 1997
 Subject: print monitor
  Folder: foo
1775
procmail: [26210] Fri Apr 11 09:25:05 1997
procmail: Notified comsat: "adam@2795482:/users/adam/mail/foo"
============================================================

[appendix B]

[lots of seemingly normal stuff cut out here]

 - process_cmd((110)n) -
q_status_message(No more messages in folder)
PROCESS_CMD return: 0
@@@@ current:449
new mail called (1 2 1)
check_point(VeryBadTime)
freq: 48  count: 1
tm: 1260  elapsed: 23
freq 48 tm 1260 changes 1 since_1st_change 23
since_status_chg 23 chk_cnt_ave 100 (tenths)
adj_chk_cnt_ave 165 (tenths)
Check:if changes(1)xadj_cca(165) >= freq(48)x200
      is 165 >= 9600 ?
Mail_Ping(mail_stream): Fri Apr 11 11:18:57 1997

New mail checked 
IMAP 11:18:57 4/11 mm_log ERROR: Unexpected changes to mailbox (try restarting): ^A^A^A^A
>From adam@foo.
q_status_message(Unexpected changes to mailbox (try resta)
Ping complete: Fri Apr 11 11:18:57 1997

******** new mail returning -1  ********
STATUS: diff:-1, displayed: 860771936, now: 860771937
d_q_status_message(Already at end of message)
d_q_status_message(No more messages in folder)
output_message(Unexpected changes to mailbox (try restarting): ^A^A^A^A
>From adam@foo.)
STATUS cmd:110, max:5, min3
cancel_busy_alarm(-1)
Select readfds:-268439024 timeval:240,0
Select on tty returned 1
Read char returning: 113 q
Read command returning: 113 q
New_mail_count zeroed

 - process_cmd((113)q) -
MAIL_CMD: quit
PROCESS_CMD return: 0
cancel_busy_alarm(-1)

    ---- QUIT SCREEN ----
expunge and close mail stream "/users/adam/mail/foo"
comatose(449) returns:"449"
end_screen called
about to end_tty_driver
end_signals(0)
- completely_done_with_adrbks -
- mailcap_free -

---

From: "Steve \"Stevers!\" Coile" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 15:37:33 -0400 (EDT)

>to wit: procmail interacting oddly with pine on a particular platform.

I recall reading somewhere that Sun machines use a slightly different
mbox format.  Check the man page for "formail".

-- 
    Steve Coile           P a t r i o t  N e t      Systems Engineering
 [email-masked]      Patriot Computer Group        (703) 277-7737

---

From: [email-masked] (Rian van der Borgt)
Date: 12 Apr 1997 08:31:17 GMT

In article <Pine.SUN.3.95.970411130548.14815A-100000@exupub>,
Derrick Green  <[email-masked]> wrote:
>>On a certain SunOS 4.1.4 box, pine chokes and dies when it
>>discovers that procmail has touched the box it's reading. 
>>"UNEXPECTED CHANGES TO MAILBOX," it says in its inimitable all
>>caps way.  "(try restarting):???" 
>
>Have you "enabled incoming folders" and then set up each mailbox
>that procmail filters to as an "incoming folder" in Pine?  If not,
>that is your problem.  It sounds like you're just reading standard
>mail folders in pine, which would cause the problem you've
>encountered (except on your INBOX). 

Well, I haven't set "enable-incoming-folders" and I have no provlems
whatsoever when procmail delivers a message to the mailbox I'm reading.
I don't think that's the problem.

Regards,

          Rian

-- 
Rian van der Borgt, Nijmegen, Netherlands.
email: [email-masked]  www: http://polder.ubc.kun.nl/~rian/