Subject: RE: DON'T DELETE

From: "Kevin Hoffer" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2003 14:22:09 -0500

If I read my mail with pine and then go and download my mail with POP I
get a message that says "DON'T DELETE THIS MESSAGE -- FOLDER INTERNAL
DATA" Is there any way to stop pine from putting that message in the
mail file?

Kevin

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From: Jim Wise <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Feb 2003 14:27:24 -0500 (EST)

>DATA" Is there any way to stop pine from putting that message in the

Says pine's help:

  FEATURE: quell-folder-internal-msg

  This feature determines whether or not Pine will create "pseudo
  messages" in folders that are in standard Unix or MMDF format.

  Pine will normally create these pseudo messages when they are not
  already present in a standard Unix or MMDF folder. Their purpose is to
  record certain mailbox state data needed for correct IMAP and POP
  server operation, and also for Pine to be able to mark messages as
  Answered when the Reply has been postponed.

  Sites which do not use IMAP/POP for remote mail access, and which need
  to support mail tools that are adversely affected by the presence of
  the pseudo-messages (e.g. some mail notification tools) may enable
  this feature to tell Pine not to create them. Note that Pine's
  "Answered" flag capability will be adversely affected if this is done.

  Note too that, even if this feature is enabled, Pine will not remove
  pseudo-messages when it encounters them (e.g. those created by UW's
  imapd or ipopd servers.) This feature has no effect on folders that
  are not in standard Unix or MMDF format, as pseudo-messages are not
  needed in the other formats to record mailbox state information.

- -- 
				Jim Wise
				[email-masked]

---

From: Mike Brudenell <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 08:56:44 +0000

Greetings -

>   needed in the other formats to record mailbox state information.

I think Jim's answer is correct as far as it goes...

However careful reading of the third and fourth paragraphs of the above 
help text shows that this setting in Pine only affects folders saved 
directly by Pine itself to disk, and then only if they do not already 
create a pseudo message.  If you are using Pine with IMAP rather than 
direct-to-disk access, or use the UW IMAP daemon at all, then this setting 
is insufficient.

The UW IMAP daemon itself creates and maintains the pseudo message (in 
order to maintain some important state information for the mail folder). 
So if you use _any_ mail client to open your folder using IMAP then I 
suspect you will find it creates the pseudo message again.  (Actually I 
think it is the C-Client library that both Pine and the UW IMAP daemon use 
to manipulate mailboxes, hence why it affects both packages.)

I believe this is the full solution (somebody please correct me if I'm 
wrong!):

1.  If you are using Pine to access your mail folders directly from disk
    (rather than over IMAP)...
    ...Set the "quell-folder-internal-msg" in Pine's configuration settings
    to prevent this.

AND

2.  If you are using the UW IMAP daemon to access your mail folders...
    ...this, too, will create the pseudo message.  Therefore you need to
    use a POP server that is 'understand' the pseudo message and hides it
    from your client's view.

    Such a server is bundled in with the IMAP and Pine dirstributions and
    called "ipop2d" and "ipop3d" (for POP2 and POP3 support respectively).
    If you switch to using this server instead of whichever POP server
    software you are currently using you should be OK.

Cheers,

Mike B-)

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