Gnus corrupt mailbox w/ nnml

Gnus corrupt mailbox w/ nnml

[Kyle Sexton]

All,

I'm trying to convert to using nnml since nnmaildir was *slooooow*.
Everything I've read says that nnml is the fastest backend for Gnus
since it is the most like an actual news server.  My setup consists
of:

fetchmail -> procmail -> Inbox.spool

When I try to start Gnus I get an error:

Error, unknown mail format! (Possibly corrupted buffer ` *nnmail
incoming*'.)

I then get stuck w/ an ~/.emacs-mail-crash-box, but whatever I do I
can't actually view the messages.  I ran the file command on the spool
and got the following back:

Work.spool: ASCII mail text

Here's the contents of my procmailrc and .gnus

.procmailrc
MAILDIR=$HOME/Mail
DEFAULT=Work/Inbox/

# Catchall to the inbox
:0:
/home/user/.incoming/Work.spool

.gnus
(setq
 gnus-secondary-select-methods '((nnml ""))
 mail-sources '((directory :path "~/.incoming/" :suffix ".spool"))
 mail-source-delete-incoming t
)


Thanks in advance for any advice.

-- 
Kyle Sexton

Re: Gnus corrupt mailbox w/ nnml

[Reiner Steib]

On Tue, Oct 16 2007, Kyle Sexton wrote:

> fetchmail -> procmail -> Inbox.spool

You meant "Work.spool"?

> When I try to start Gnus I get an error:
>
> Error, unknown mail format! (Possibly corrupted buffer ` *nnmail
> incoming*'.)
>
> I then get stuck w/ an ~/.emacs-mail-crash-box, but whatever I do I
> can't actually view the messages.  I ran the file command on the spool
> and got the following back:
>
> Work.spool: ASCII mail text

The error occurs if Gnus can't find "^From " in the spool file.
Please show us the (anonymized) output of "head -n1 Work.spool".
It should look like this:

| From ttttttt@mmmmmm.invalid  Tue Oct 16 08:50:06 2007

> Here's the contents of my procmailrc and .gnus
[...]
> # Catchall to the inbox
> :0:
> /home/user/.incoming/Work.spool
>
> .gnus
> (setq
>  gnus-secondary-select-methods '((nnml ""))
>  mail-sources '((directory :path "~/.incoming/" :suffix ".spool"))
>  mail-source-delete-incoming t
> )

Setting `mail-source-delete-incoming' to t or a number during testing
might be a good idea.

Which version of Gnus are you using?

Bye, Reiner.
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
---ooO-(_)-Ooo---  |  PGP key available  |  http://rsteib.home.pages.de/

Re: Gnus corrupt mailbox w/ nnml

[Kyle Sexton]

On 10/16/07, Reiner Steib <reinersteib+gmane@imap.cc> wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 16 2007, Kyle Sexton wrote:
>
> > fetchmail -> procmail -> Inbox.spool
>
> You meant "Work.spool"?

You caught me. :)

> The error occurs if Gnus can't find "^From " in the spool file.
> Please show us the (anonymized) output of "head -n1 Work.spool".
> It should look like this:
>
> | From ttttttt@mmmmmm.invalid  Tue Oct 16 08:50:06 2007
>

Well, that explains my problem I guess.  The first line says:

~$ head -n1 Work.spool
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft Exchange V6.5
~$

In fact, the ^From isn't until line 18:

~$ cat Work.spool | nl | grep From
    18  From: "Anon Ymous" <anon@anon.com>
~$

-- 
Kyle Sexton

Re: Gnus corrupt mailbox w/ nnml

[Reiner Steib]

On Tue, Oct 16 2007, Kyle Sexton wrote:

> On 10/16/07, Reiner Steib <reinersteib+gmane@imap.cc> wrote:
[...]
>> | From ttttttt@mmmmmm.invalid  Tue Oct 16 08:50:06 2007
>
> Well, that explains my problem I guess.  The first line says:
>
> ~$ head -n1 Work.spool
> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft Exchange V6.5
> ~$
>
> In fact, the ^From isn't until line 18:
>
> ~$ cat Work.spool | nl | grep From
>     18  From: "Anon Ymous" <anon@anon.com>
> ~$

That not the "From " line, but the "From:" line.  An mbox file needs
to start with "From " as in my example.

Bye, Reiner.
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
---ooO-(_)-Ooo---  |  PGP key available  |  http://rsteib.home.pages.de/

Re: Gnus corrupt mailbox w/ nnml

[Kyle Sexton]

On 10/16/07, Reiner Steib <reinersteib+gmane@imap.cc> wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 16 2007, Kyle Sexton wrote:
>
> > On 10/16/07, Reiner Steib <reinersteib+gmane@imap.cc> wrote:
> [...]
> >> | From ttttttt@mmmmmm.invalid  Tue Oct 16 08:50:06 2007
> >
> > Well, that explains my problem I guess.  The first line says:
> >
> > ~$ head -n1 Work.spool
> > X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft Exchange V6.5
> > ~$
> >
> > In fact, the ^From isn't until line 18:
> >
> > ~$ cat Work.spool | nl | grep From
> >     18  From: "Anon Ymous" <anon@anon.com>
> > ~$
>
> That not the "From " line, but the "From:" line.  An mbox file needs
> to start with "From " as in my example.
>
> Bye, Reiner.
> --
>        ,,,
>       (o o)
> ---ooO-(_)-Ooo---  |  PGP key available  |  http://rsteib.home.pages.de/
> _______________________________________________
> info-gnus-english mailing list
> info-gnus-english@gnu.org
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-gnus-english
>

Redownloaded my spool file and now it goes through fine, but it spools
into just one *really* big message, instead of splitting them into
individual messages.  Any idea what could cause that?  Using Gnus 5.11


-- 
Kyle Sexton

Re: Gnus corrupt mailbox w/ nnml

[Reiner Steib]

On Wed, Oct 17 2007, Kyle Sexton wrote:

> Redownloaded my spool file and now it goes through fine, but it spools
> into just one *really* big message, instead of splitting them into
> individual messages.  Any idea what could cause that?

Hard to tell without looking at the spool file.  I'd guess that again
the "From " lines (for the second and later messages) are corrupted.
Note that the messages must be separated like this:

|Last line.  Followed by one or more blank lines, then "From "...
|
|From foo@bar.invalid  Wed Oct 17 18:56:21 2007

Additionally, you may check, if mail/mailx is able to parse the file:

  mail -H -f Work.spool

Bye, Reiner.
-- 
       ,,,
      (o o)
---ooO-(_)-Ooo---  |  PGP key available  |  http://rsteib.home.pages.de/

Re: Gnus corrupt mailbox w/ nnml

[Sven Bretfeld]

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Hi Kyle

"Kyle Sexton" <ks@mocker.org> writes:

> Well, that explains my problem I guess.  The first line says:
>
> ~$ head -n1 Work.spool
> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft Exchange V6.5
> ~$
>
> In fact, the ^From isn't until line 18:
>
> ~$ cat Work.spool | nl | grep From
>     18  From: "Anon Ymous" <anon@anon.com>
> ~$

The whole trick is to tell procmail to create a standard mbox wherein
all Mails begin with a From-Header (without :). To achive this, you
have to start procmail with the option -f %F.

So add this to the poll-line in your .fetchmailrc, for example:

poll your_mail_account with proto POP3 user 'your_pop_user_name' there
       with password 'secret' is 'your_local_username' here options
       keep ssl mda "/usr/bin/procmail -f %F"

That's all.

Bye,

Sven

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Re: Gnus corrupt mailbox w/ nnml

[Kyle Sexton]

On 10/21/07, Sven Bretfeld <sven.bretfeld@relwi.unibe.ch> wrote:
> Hi Kyle
>
> "Kyle Sexton" <ks@mocker.org> writes:
>
> > Well, that explains my problem I guess.  The first line says:
> >
> > ~$ head -n1 Work.spool
> > X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft Exchange V6.5
> > ~$
> >
> > In fact, the ^From isn't until line 18:
> >
> > ~$ cat Work.spool | nl | grep From
> >     18  From: "Anon Ymous" <anon@anon.com>
> > ~$
>
> The whole trick is to tell procmail to create a standard mbox wherein
> all Mails begin with a From-Header (without :). To achive this, you
> have to start procmail with the option -f %F.
>
> So add this to the poll-line in your .fetchmailrc, for example:
>
> poll your_mail_account with proto POP3 user 'your_pop_user_name' there
>        with password 'secret' is 'your_local_username' here options
>        keep ssl mda "/usr/bin/procmail -f %F"
>
> That's all.
>
> Bye,
>
> Sven
>

Worked like a charm, thanks a bunch.


-- 
Kyle Sexton