From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Jan 30 17:54:59 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id RAA20916 for hackers-outgoing; Thu, 30 Jan 1997 17:54:59 -0800 (PST) Received: from genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au (genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au [129.127.96.120]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id RAA20910 for ; Thu, 30 Jan 1997 17:54:56 -0800 (PST) Received: (from msmith@localhost) by genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au (8.8.2/8.7.3) id MAA04589; Fri, 31 Jan 1997 12:24:02 +1030 (CST) From: Michael Smith Message-Id: <199701310154.MAA04589@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> Subject: Re: Mail digestion In-Reply-To: <199701301704.KAA22180@phaeton.artisoft.com> from Terry Lambert at "Jan 30, 97 10:04:42 am" To: terry@lambert.org (Terry Lambert) Date: Fri, 31 Jan 1997 12:24:00 +1030 (CST) Cc: msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au, hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL28 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Terry Lambert stands accused of saying: > > Elm appears to have just eaten all my outstanding mail (some 200+ items). > > > > If you were expecting a response from me on something, you'll need to > > send it again. 8( > > Describe the event. It may be in your "received" folder (to access, > "elm -f =received"). It may be that your tmp got full on the save, > or some other event occured, where it ran out of space and bailed. > Typically, this will leave a file in /tmp or /usr/tmp, etc., which > you can recover by catting it onto your mail file. I've been using elm for probably close to a decade now, so I think I have a reasonable idea of its failure modes 8) The 'event' was the key sequence 'd$' : delete message, update folder, swap virtual (fvwm) screen. When I returned to the screen with elm (running in an xterm over a slow ssh session), I had no messages in my inbox. /var/mail/msmith and /tmp/mbox.msmith were both size zero. The last message in my received folder is dated november. There's no NFS in the picture anywhere; all I can think of is a race between elm and mail.local in locking the mailbox. 8( > Terry Lambert -- ]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer msmith@gsoft.com.au [[ ]] Genesis Software genesis@gsoft.com.au [[ ]] High-speed data acquisition and (GSM mobile) 0411-222-496 [[ ]] realtime instrument control. (ph) +61-8-8267-3493 [[ ]] Unix hardware collector. "Where are your PEZ?" The Tick [[