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From: Kelly Felkins <kellyfelkins2003 AT yahoo DOT com>
Subject: Re: fetchmail/procmail lost messages
Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2004 16:44:19 +0000 (UTC)
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References: <20040423005903 DOT GA444 AT knuckles> <20040423125357 DOT GB1724 AT tishler DOT net>
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Jason Tishler <jason <at> tishler.net> writes:

> 
> Kelly,
> 
> On Thu, Apr 22, 2004 at 05:59:06PM -0700, Kelly Felkins wrote:
> > For example, today the hard drive that I use for both the spool file
> > and my mail boxes was off-line. Five messages to /dev/null.
> > 
> > I'm inclined to think this is a bad design. Or have I got it
> > configured incorrectly?
> 
> Possibly.
> 
> I highly recommend using a spool file that is *always* on-line (e.g.,
> /var/spool/mail/$LOGNAME).  Nevertheless, fetchmail should not have
> flushed the message if procmail exited with a nonzero status.
> 
> BTW, I have used Cygwin fetchmail/procmail to process my mail for about
> 3 years.  I process more 10,000 emails per month.  So, I have processed
> more than 300,000 messages during this time period.  AFAICT, I have not
> lost a single message.
> 
> Jason
> 

Thanks for responding. Your suggestion for locating the spool file is wise. A
few questions:

- How do you know you haven't lost messages? It appears that the only notice I
get is a brief message on my console, just before the message about "flushing"
-- it's a bad feeling to see an error message, followed by "flushing".

- Any suggestions for diagnosing the problem? It seems like procmail should
return an error code, and fetchmail should respond to that error code - this is
apparently not happening. I don't know if procmail is not returning an error
status, or if fetchmail is ignoring it. How can I verify this?

When everything is configured correctly the system works nicely. But I have to
say that I am deeply troubled that when there is a problem it looses messages. 

Any other suggestions? Like, should I dump fetchmail or procmail or both? Any
recommended alternatives?

Thanks very much.

-Kelly


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