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Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2004 16:59:20 -0400
From: Jason Tishler <jason AT tishler DOT net>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: fetchmail/procmail lost messages
Message-ID: <20040423205920.GA1556@tishler.net>
Mail-Followup-To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
References: <20040423005903 DOT GA444 AT knuckles> <20040423125357 DOT GB1724 AT tishler DOT net> <loom DOT 20040423T183639-368 AT post DOT gmane DOT org>
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Kelly,

On Fri, Apr 23, 2004 at 04:44:19PM +0000, Kelly Felkins wrote:
> Jason Tishler <jason <at> tishler.net> writes:
> > 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.
> 
> 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".

I don't really know, hence the "AFAICT".  Nevertheless, my perception is
that message delivery seems very reliable.

> - Any suggestions for diagnosing the problem?

Use VERBOSE=yes, as in the following:

    $ procmail VERBOSE=yes .procmailrc-test </tmp/jtishler.mail 
    procmail: [4400] Fri Apr 23 16:42:06 2004
    procmail: Rcfile: "/home/jtishler/.procmailrc-test"
    procmail: Assigning "MAILDIR=/home/jtishler"
    procmail: Assigning "MAILDIR=/cygdrive/g/cygwin/home/kellyf/Mail"
    procmail: Couldn't chdir to "/cygdrive/g/cygwin/home/kellyf/Mail"
    procmail: Assigning "MAILDIR=."
    procmail: Assigning "DEFAULT=./inbox"
    procmail: Locking "./inbox.lock"
    procmail: Assigning "LASTFOLDER=./inbox"
    procmail: Opening "./inbox"
    procmail: Acquiring kernel-lock
    procmail: Unlocking "./inbox.lock"
    From jtishler  Tue Mar 30 13:30:54 2004
     Subject: XYZ: FW: UNIX ID for Jason Tishler
      Folder: ./inbox

The above indicates that your mail was not, lost but stored in ~/inbox.
This was confirmed by Robert.  Can you confirm this too?

> 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?

procmail is returning 0, as confirmed by Robert:

    $ echo $?
    0

Which explains why fetchmail flushes the message.

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

Use reasonable locations (e.g., local drives) to store your mail
messages.

Jason

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