Problem with Fedora1 and ipop3d

[Nigel Wade]

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