Subject: Inbox not displaying all messages

From: Greg Dec <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 14:59:53 -0500

Hello everyone!

Here is a wierd problem I have noticed with our recent install of Pine 4.44:

A few users have complained that they log into PINE and will see a few 
messages in their INBOX folder, but when they go to download the 
messages using Netscape mail or other IMAP/POP clients, there are 
additional messages that DID NOT show up in PINE.   Further, these "new" 
messages were OLDER than the ones that managed to be displayed in PINE. 
Its almost as if PINE does not display all the new messages that are 
there, but evidently the messages are there as other clients seem to 
pick them up.   Could somehting be moving the messages directly to the 
Mbox?  I checked all the PINE config files, but nothing is sent to 
auto-move or anything like that.   Again,  its just a few messages here 
and there.

I am new to this version of PINE and haven't really looked into  it in 
detail as of yet.   I am sure some of you on here might suggest an 
upgrade to the latest version, but this seemed so odd.

_greg

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From: Eduardo Chappa <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 20:05:18 -0800 (PST)

*** Greg Dec ([email-masked]) wrote in the pine-info list today:

:) A few users have complained that they log into PINE and will see a few
:) messages in their INBOX folder, but when they go to download the
:) messages using Netscape mail or other IMAP/POP clients, there are
:) additional messages that DID NOT show up in PINE.  Further, these "new"
:) messages were OLDER than the ones that managed to be displayed in PINE.
:) Its almost as if PINE does not display all the new messages that are
:) there, but evidently the messages are there as other clients seem to
:) pick them up.  Could somehting be moving the messages directly to the
:) Mbox?  I checked all the PINE config files, but nothing is sent to
:) auto-move or anything like that.  Again, its just a few messages here
:) and there.

Hi Greg,

  Here there's an idea that explains in my mind what's happening.

   Could it be that your users are using Pine on local access, but
Netscape on an IMAP server?. If so, this is what's happening.

  A user connects using Netscape to the server. The server sees a mbox
file, which contains (but may not be) a unix style folder. If this is the
case, the server transfers all the messages from the server to the mbox
file and from that moment, the access is local. The server is like a proxy
between you and mbox. Messages are moved from wherever the inbox is to
the mbox file.

  Pine is started in a local session (not through the imap server). Pine
does not see the mbox file, because either the user disabled this driver
or because Pine was compiled without support for this driver (are you
using RedHat?). In this case, pine will only see /var/spool/mail/ and use
that as the INBOX. Messages stay in /var/spool/mail.

  If a user uses Pine and later Netscape in this form, Netscape will see
all messages in the spool plus those in the mbox file, giving the user the
idea that Pine missed some messages.

  Here there are some possible solutions for you:

1. Make users use the IMAP server to read their e-mail. Pine can be
   configured to read e-mail through imap. Simply define the inbox-path
   variable as

inbox-path={your.imapserver.com/user=UserId}inbox

 All messages will be in mbox when they read them.

2. Another possible solution is to build Pine from scratch. If my hunch is
   correct and you are using RedHat, the problem will be solved
   immediately by building a fresh copy of Pine. Consider upgrading to
   4.58, which solves all security holes found so far.

3. Rebuild the server and disable the mbox driver before building.
   Transfer all messages from mbox to /var/spool/mail. Future access to
   INBOX will be in /var/spool/mail, instead of mbox.

My personal advice, is consider 1, then 3 and then 2. I am strongly biased
towards 3. In my opinion the mbox driver is a bad idea, exactly because of
your problem, but that's just my opinion. Other people think differently.

Take a look at my web page

http://www.math.washington.edu/~chappa/pine/pine-info/build/

for some more explanation on the mbox driver and how to disable it during
compilation.

Eduardo
http://www.math.washington.edu/~chappa/pine/