Dear Jeffery,
Thank you for your question and hints. I have seen similar problem with
mutt 1.5.20 since half an year ago. (And reported it the other day)
You said: "if I do anything that changes the inbox file, such as
deleting a message, then the Gnome mail monitor sees this change and
begins indicating that there is new mail". This is a good discovery. It
looks that mutt 1.5.20 forgets to clear or set something which would
avoid the mail monitor or mutt itself think there is new mail.
(I've rewound my mutt back to 1.5.18, which runs perfectly.) Would you
please check the file status of the mailbox with the 'stat' command?
This is my test on mbox.mutt with mutt 1.5.18:
(1) Before I leave the mail box 'mbox.mutt':
----[23:45:20] $ stat mbox.mutt
File: `mbox.mutt'
Size: 38403 Blocks: 80 IO Block: 4096 regular file
Device: 805h/2053d Inode: 687405 Links: 1
Access: (0600/-rw-------) Uid: ( 500/ jie) Gid: ( 500/ jie)
Access: 2010-08-08 23:45:10.000000000 +0800
Modify: 2010-08-08 23:35:02.000000000 +0800
Change: 2010-08-08 23:35:02.000000000 +0800
(2) After I left the 'mbox.mutt':
----[23:46:36] $ stat mbox.mutt
File: `mbox.mutt'
Size: 13651 Blocks: 32 IO Block: 4096 regular file
Device: 805h/2053d Inode: 687405 Links: 1
Access: (0600/-rw-------) Uid: ( 500/ jie) Gid: ( 500/ jie)
Access: 2010-08-08 23:45:10.000000000 +0800
Modify: 2010-08-08 23:35:02.000000000 +0800
Change: 2010-08-08 23:46:47.000000000 +0800
Note: The time of 'Change' is updated to newer than the time of 'Acesss'.
(Because I deleted a message in it.)
Please help check if your mutt 1.5.20 does the same thing or not.
(You need to delete a message in it.)
best regards,
charlie
On Sun, Aug 08, 2010 at 04:27:53AM +0000, Jeffery Small wrote:
> I have been using mutt 1.4.2.1i for quite some time on my Solaris 10 system
> with the Gnome desktop manager. Gnome has an inbox monitor program that
> was working perfectly with mutt 1.4. It would indicate new mail, and when
> I double-clicked on the monitor icon, it would launch mutt in a pop-up
> xterm window and immediately stop indicating new mail. I would read and
> process my mail and exit mutt without any problems.
>
> I just switched to mutt 1.5.20 which is working fine, except that I now
> have a strange new problem with the Gnome mail monitor. When it indicates
> new mail I double-click on the icon and it launches the new version of mutt
> just fine and stops indicating new mail. However, if I do anything that
> changes the inbox file, such as deleting a message, then the Gnome mail
> monitor sees this change and begins indicating that there is new mail, when
> in fact, there is none. This happens whether mutt is still running or has
> been exited.
>
> I can understand that the monitor is seeing an update on the inbox file
> timestamp due to the content changing, but my question is why didn't this
> ever happen with mutt version 1.4.2.1i? What was the old version doing that
> the new one is not? I'm using pretty much the same config file settings.
>
> Thanks for any insights.
>
> Regards,
> --
> Jeffery Small
