Hi, I run getmail4 with a cli configuration to check and download mail from a bunch of POP accounts, like so:
/usr/bin/getmail -d -r pop1 -r pop2 -r pop3 ... The mail is delivered to an mbox (mboxrd) mailbox, in usr/spool/mail/username Every now and then, something goes wrong (I have no idea what), and the mbox file ends up corrupted: the corruption pattern I have seen is a bunch of null characters preceding the actual mails. [Deleting the trailing nulls seems to uncorrupt the file.] On a recent getmail run, for example, all of pop1 was downloaded and delivered fine, the first 7 of 10 messages of pop2 were also, and I then had several dozen of the following errors (i.e., on the following several dozen messages, across a bunch of POP accounts): Delivery error (mboxrd delivery 17212 error (127, mbox delivery process failed (not an mboxrd file (/var/spool/mail/username)))) msg 8/10 (6694 bytes), delivery error (mboxrd delivery 17212 error (127, mbox delivery process failed (not an mboxrd file (/var/spool/mail/username)))) AFAICTL, all those mails were just lost (!) Is there anything I can do to recover them? getmail is set to delete messages on the server after successful retrieval, and it's apparently doing so here, *even though the delivery is failing*! This behavior is surely unacceptable. Is there a way to tell getmail to wait to delete until successful delivery? How about a way to tell getmail to abort if the mailbox is corrupt? What causes this corruption (this is a laptop, no power failure or disk corruption AFAIK, etc.)? How to prevent it? Is there a better MRA / MDA the list recommends? Has anyone seen this sort of thing with either getmail or other MRAs / MDAs? Sorry for the breathless rant, but losing, apparently permanently, several dozen mails is just completely unacceptable. Celejar -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20140203093413.bd2883c01a7ae8f6926f8...@gmail.com
