Subject: Wu-Pine Wu-Imap errors

From: Andy Robertson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 14:15:09 -0800 (PST)

Hello all.

I am a new member to this list.  I have been trying
to diagnose a problem with I have been having with
Pine 4.05 and WU-Imap4.4/4.5.  I am running pine on
RedHat 5.1, the server on slackware 3.  Both on
p5-100 systems with 32 meg ram.

The problem is that every few minutes Pine's open
mailbox gets closed with an "CLOSED DUE TO ACCESS
ERROR" message.  On the server, this message is
logged in /var/log/messages "Dec  7 14:45:34 sec022
imapd[21612]: Fatal mailbox error user=support1
host=xxx.xxx.com [255.255.255.255]
mbx=/home/support1/New Mail: Unexpected changes to
mailbox (try restarting): F"  At this point the Pine
email client stops functioning properly (can't read
messages) and I have to either restart Pine or move
to a different mailbox on a different server and then
move back.

I have researched this on the pine-info archive and
dejanews.  And I have found that this is a "feature"
on recent versions of the Washington University Imap
server.  The problem is that multiple processes are
accessing the imap mailbox at once.  This could be
sendmail and a Pine client.  Could be two pine clients
reading at once.  imapd used to switch to a readonly
mode when this happened, but the designers removed
this readonly mode to conserve memory (at the
complaints from many users complaining that imapd is
a memory hog) and instead close the connection.  They
have no plans
to ever re-impliment this mode.

Pine is the only mail client that I have found that
finds this to be a problem.  Netscape and IE are
not even fazed by this, they simply connect again.

Here is my question, how do I fix this problem? 
Preferrably on the server side.  I have heard one
suggestion that using qmail and maildirs with imap
would fix it, but I have found the qmail IMAP patches
to be slightly kludgy, either not working or leaving
apparent junk in the mail dirs (my CEO is obsessed
with clutter....).  Does anyone know of any other
ways to fix this?  Does the Cyrus imap server have
this problem?  I have tried to use it in the past, but
ran into problems.  The Sendmail/Procmail/Imapd team
is much cleaner.  Is there an option in pine what
would tell it to just reconnect?

I have found Pine to be an excellent mail client.  So
far I have managed to find a configuration option to
fix every problem that I have had....

This problem only rarely shows up with less used users.
Through this one imap user we have three connecting
clients and about 20k messages a day (most of which
are filtered by Procmail).  That is why I see the
problem every few minutes ;)

Thanks to everyone for reading this!  I'm open to any
suggestions.  I would prefer to stick with
wu-imapd/wu-pine, but would consider changing either
or both of these if it fixes the problem.

aNDY

Classified: I am currently in the market for a
jumping mexican bean bag chair.  If you have one in
stock, please contact me.  Price is negotiable.
_________________________________________________________
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From: Martin Mokrejs <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1998 01:13:43 +0100 (MET)

Re: Andy Robertson <[email-masked]>

 AR> I am a new member to this list.  I have been trying
 AR> to diagnose a problem with I have been having with
 AR> Pine 4.05 and WU-Imap4.4/4.5.  I am running pine on
 AR> RedHat 5.1, the server on slackware 3.  Both on
 AR> p5-100 systems with 32 meg ram.
 AR> 
 AR> The problem is that every few minutes Pine's open
 AR> mailbox gets closed with an "CLOSED DUE TO ACCESS
 AR> ERROR" message.  On the server, this message is
 AR> logged in /var/log/messages "Dec  7 14:45:34 sec022
 AR> imapd[21612]: Fatal mailbox error user=support1
 AR> host=xxx.xxx.com [255.255.255.255]

I have same problems on Digital Unix 4.0D while using pine 4.05.
I'd to mention, that I posted similar question a month ago, no response!
I'm using only pine, however, system runs sendmail/procmail, 
Qualcomm popper 2.53 and Imap 4.1. However, I do not use any pop3 or imap
clients to read messages.

Pine dumps core when it detects new message in INBOX. That's most often
when quitting pine, while it most probably wants to _update_ INBOX and
delete some messages. it happens also when you for example delete all you
new messages in some previous session, and when messages are delivered
during your new session.

signal IOT/Abort trap at >*[__kill, 0x3ff800ea6c8]      beq     r19,
0x3ff800ea6e0
(dbx) where
>  0 __kill(0x3ff800df210, 0x3ffc0085c98, 0x0, 0x100000000, 0x3ff80177488)
[0x3ff800ea6c8]
   1 (unknown)() [0x3ff8019e770]
   2 __tis_raise(0x3ff80177488, 0x1400b6868, 0x3ff801147cc, 0x6,
0x3ff80160aec) [0x3ff801147c8]
   3 raise(0x3ff801147cc, 0x6, 0x3ff80160aec, 0xffffffffffffffff,
0x3ff801774b4) [0x3ff80160ae8]
   4 abort(0x120179f1c, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0xf00000000) [0x3ff801774b0]
   5 coredump() ["os.c":881, 0x120179f18]
   6 panic(message = 0x1400b6868 = "Received abort signal")
["pine.c":2963, 0x12013dd30]
   7 auger_in_signal() ["signals.c":220, 0x12015eba4]

DBX Fault: Segmentation fault

When I investigated the problem with dumped cores from full-debug
binaries, it seemed that pine "correctly" exits because of SIGKILL or
SIGHUP. 

In some rare cases pine reported "CLOSED DUE TO ACCESS ERROR" while
reading messages. But again, most often it dumps while browsing INBOX and
new message appears or while quitting.

It seems that turning off the option mail-check-interval made the problem
less frequent.

I'm also waiting for some patches. ;)

Martin Mokrejs