Problem with Fedora1 and ipop3d

[Tim Alberts]

On Friday 23 April 2004 09:35, you wrote:
> 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?

I don't believe so, I just checked the home folders again and still no 
mailboxes started.