nnimap silently ignores invalid mailboxes

nnimap silently ignores invalid mailboxes

[Nevin Kapur]

Recently we had problems with our mail system so that my spool file
was no longer a valid mbox file (it started with rom_ instead of
From_).

I use nnimap-split-fancy to split all incoming mail. Following the
corruption, I got no indication that INBOX was corrupted and mail just
kept piling up in there.  I got suspicious after seemingly not
receiving any email for a day!

I was hoping that there were some way that Gnus could warn me when
this situation occurred.  When I tried accessing the corrupted INBOX
with other IMAP clients (pine and Evolution), I was given clear
indication that something was wrong.

-- 
		     :: Nevin :: nevin@jhu.edu ::

Re: nnimap silently ignores invalid mailboxes

[Simon Josefsson]

On Wed, 10 Apr 2002, Nevin Kapur wrote:

> Recently we had problems with our mail system so that my spool file
> was no longer a valid mbox file (it started with rom_ instead of
> From_).
> 
> I use nnimap-split-fancy to split all incoming mail. Following the
> corruption, I got no indication that INBOX was corrupted and mail just
> kept piling up in there.  I got suspicious after seemingly not
> receiving any email for a day!
> 
> I was hoping that there were some way that Gnus could warn me when
> this situation occurred.  When I tried accessing the corrupted INBOX
> with other IMAP clients (pine and Evolution), I was given clear
> indication that something was wrong.

Hm, Gnus's imap stuff doesn't care about From at all, it retrieves 
articles using IMAP commands.  I guess the server was confused and didn't 
return any messages, but I don't understand why other clients would work 
in that case.  Could you delete the F in your spool file and experiment a 
little to see what fails?

Ah. Maybe the server does report something to the client, but Gnus doesn't 
display it.  What does other clients display as error?  If you use Gnus, 
how does the *imap-log* (see imap-log) buffer look around the error 
message?

Re: nnimap silently ignores invalid mailboxes

[Nevin Kapur]

Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:

> On Wed, 10 Apr 2002, Nevin Kapur wrote:

[...]

>> I was hoping that there were some way that Gnus could warn me when
>> this situation occurred.  When I tried accessing the corrupted INBOX
>> with other IMAP clients (pine and Evolution), I was given clear
>> indication that something was wrong.
>
> Hm, Gnus's imap stuff doesn't care about From at all, it retrieves 
> articles using IMAP commands.  I guess the server was confused and didn't 
> return any messages, but I don't understand why other clients would work 
> in that case.  Could you delete the F in your spool file and experiment a 
> little to see what fails?

936 SELECT "INBOX"
936 NO SELECT failed: Can't open INBOX (file /var/spool/mail/kapur): not in valid mailbox format

I tried that.  Here are the relevant lines.  So the UW server does
give indication that something is amiss.

> Ah. Maybe the server does report something to the client, but Gnus doesn't 
> display it.  What does other clients display as error?

Both Evolution and PINE display something close to the second line as
the error message.

-- 
:: Nevin ::

Re: nnimap silently ignores invalid mailboxes

[Simon Josefsson]

On Thu, 11 Apr 2002, Nevin Kapur wrote:

> >> I was hoping that there were some way that Gnus could warn me when
> >> this situation occurred.  When I tried accessing the corrupted INBOX
> >> with other IMAP clients (pine and Evolution), I was given clear
> >> indication that something was wrong.
> >
> > Hm, Gnus's imap stuff doesn't care about From at all, it retrieves 
> > articles using IMAP commands.  I guess the server was confused and didn't 
> > return any messages, but I don't understand why other clients would work 
> > in that case.  Could you delete the F in your spool file and experiment a 
> > little to see what fails?
> 
> 936 SELECT "INBOX"
> 936 NO SELECT failed: Can't open INBOX (file /var/spool/mail/kapur): not in valid mailbox format
> 
> I tried that.  Here are the relevant lines.  So the UW server does
> give indication that something is amiss.

It seems to work for me; subscribing to a non-existent group and trying to
enter it yields

266 SELECT "INBOX.foo"
266 NO Det gick inte att hitta det begärda objektet.
267 SELECT "INBOX.foo"
267 NO Det gick inte att hitta det begärda objektet.

and the following in the message buffer.

nnimap+exno02:INBOX.foo error: Det gick inte att hitta det begärda objektet.

Perhaps some other message was displayed after this making the error
scroll by.  Anything in the *Message* buffer?

Re: nnimap silently ignores invalid mailboxes

[Nevin Kapur]

Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com> writes:

> It seems to work for me; subscribing to a non-existent group and trying to
> enter it yields

[...]

> Perhaps some other message was displayed after this making the error
> scroll by.  Anything in the *Message* buffer?

OK, so if the mailbox is corrupt and I try to access it using `j',
then I do get the error prominently displayed in the minibuffer.
However, I use nnimap-split-fancy, never accessing INBOX directly.  In
this situation, Gnus tries to access INBOX to apply my split rules,
gets a response from the server that the mailbox is corrupt, but just
ignores it -- no indication in the *Message-Log* buffer either.

-- 
:: Nevin ::