Problem with Fedora1 and ipop3d
Nigel Wade
nmw at ion.le.ac.uk
Fri Apr 23 16:35:09 UTC 2004
Tim Alberts wrote:
> On Thursday 22 April 2004 18:46, Jeff Vian wrote:
>
>>Rick Stevens wrote:
>>
>>>Tim Alberts wrote:
>>>
>>>>I've learned that if I set the /var/spool/mail folder permission to
>>>>777, I no longer get the following error.
>>>>
>>>>Mailbox Vulnerable - Directory /var/spool/mail must have 1777 protection
>>>>
>>>>It seems odd that something requires worldwriteable access to the
>>>>/var/spool/mail folder.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>However, the main problem persists that if I use kmail to retrieve
>>>>email from the pop3 server, the /var/spool/mail/user email file gets
>>>>
>>>>written with the message:
>>>>
>>>>>From MAILER-DAEMON Thu Apr 22 11:50:17 2004
>>>>
>>>>Date: 22 Apr 2004 11:50:17 -0700
>>>>From: Mail System Internal Data <MAILER-DAEMON at localhost.localdomain>
>>>>Subject: DON'T DELETE THIS MESSAGE -- FOLDER INTERNAL DATA
>>>>Message-ID: <1082659817 at localhost.localdomain>
>>>>X-IMAP: 1082659816 0000000002
>>>>Status: RO
>>>>
>>>>This text is part of the internal format of your mail folder, and is not
>>>>a real message. It is created automatically by the mail system
>>>>software.
>>>>If deleted, important folder data will be lost, and it will be
>>>>re-created
>>>>with the data reset to initial values.
>>>>
>>>>A few people have hinted that imapd writes this to a mail file to
>>>>keep track of which emails have been read. How can this be happening
>>>>if I have the imapd disabled?
>>>
>>>As I said in an earlier posting, ipop3d is based on Crispin's c-client
>>>code. So is imapd, so even though you have imapd disabled, the ipop3d
>>>may be inserting that message because it's done in the c-client bit.
>>>
>>>I just looked at the source code for imapd and ipop3d (for the
>>>terminally curious, specifically the imap-2000e version) and they both
>>>use the c-client "unix" driver for mailboxes. That driver inserts the
>>>message, so now even the POP daemon inserts the IMAP housekeeping
>>>message. Lovely.
>>>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer rstevens at vitalstream.com -
>>>- VitalStream, Inc. http://www.vitalstream.com -
>>>- -
>>>- He who laughs last thinks slowest. -
>>>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>Now I am really puzzled!
>>
>>Everyone on this thread seems upset by a behavior that I know has
>>existed in mail on Linux for at least the last 7 years.
>>
>>Is it because you just found out about it? or is there really a problem
>>with this behavior? Email clients do not even see that dummy message.
>> Only when looking at the box contents with a text browser such as
>>cat/less/etc or an editor such as vi/vim/emacs/etc do you even see it.
>
>
> You are correct. I am having trouble with email dissappearing on my FC1
> server. I've been running RH7.3 without any problems for a couple years and
> have never seen these messages in the user mailboxes before. I thought these
> were a symptom of the problem I was experiencing. However, as you and others
> have so kindly helped me understand, these are not error messages they are
> required by the server.
>
> I am currently looking at the source of my problems being either in my
> procmail recipe, or the ClamAV program I installed.
>
> So thank you for the help you have given me. Any more help you can offer
> would be appreciatted, but I think I have to better define where I'm at
> before I can ask for help.
>
>
>>As I said earlier, it seems to be put there by the daemon serving the
>>mail, and I have seen it ranging from pine to mutt to other clients such
>>as fetchmail and mozilla. I believe it is being put there by the host,
>>and not sendmail or the client. I think this is more of a scare than a
>>problem as it is a housekeeping thing. Alexander has recently shown that.
>
>
>
IIRC, one other "feature" of that imap/pop server is that if the file ~/mbox
exists it copies all messages from /var/mail/ to ~/mbox and uses ~/mbox as
your inbox.
Could that be what's happening to your mail?
--
Nigel Wade, System Administrator, Space Plasma Physics Group,
University of Leicester, Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK
E-mail : nmw at ion.le.ac.uk
Phone : +44 (0)116 2523548, Fax : +44 (0)116 2523555
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