Re: [Evolution] Summary and folder mismatch, even after a sync

[Not Zed <notzed ximian com>]

1. Use imap.
2. Use maildir.
3. You can use an mbox tree, but you just may occasionally encounter
some weird problems.  Evolution does about as much as it can to ensure
those problems are not fatal though (or it is intended that it does).  

The only reason i say its not supported, is that I dont want to have to
ensure it works.  If things fail (but they shouldn't), and you lose
mail, its 'well i told you it was a risk', but if its a risk you're
prepared to take ...

For example I know if you use 'elm -f folder' it does NO locking on the
folder.  So it is possible to lose mail if both evolution or procmail
and elm are accessing the same folder at the same time.  I dont know if
pine locks its local folders, or only locks teh spool folder.  If it
doesn't it too could lose mail.  etc.  In cases where the other
application uses no locking, or a different locking mechanism, then
there is always the potential for serious mailbox corruption, even if it
isn't great.

I remember having many corrupted mailbox spools on a system where the
pop server used a differnet locking mechanism to sendmail.  So the
problem isn't only limited to evolution.

maildir gets around this as it uses and requires no locking.
imap gets around this problem by having multiple access arbitrated
through a single server.

So.  Using mbox files is 'probably safe', but it might not be, depending
on the system setup and software you're using!

On Tue, 2001-12-04 at 15:54, Juan Martinez wrote:
> Is there a way to share folders between pine and evolution while
> filtering with procmail?
>
>
> On 4 Dec 2001, Not Zed wrote:
>
> > Date: 04 Dec 2001 08:42:18 +1030
> > From: Not Zed <notzed ximian com>
> > To: Fred Chagnon <fchagnon corp attcanada ca>
> > Cc: evolution ximian com
> > Subject: Re: [Evolution] Summary and folder mismatch, even after a sync
> >
> > On Tue, 2001-12-04 at 06:24, Fred Chagnon wrote:
> > > > An eaiser fix is to just remove the .ev-summary file in the folder, that
> > > > way you dont lose your messages at least.
> > > >
> > > > It happens because it tried to re-fresh the summary to match the folder,
> > > > but after doing that, it still didn't make sense.  i.e. it tried to load
> > > > a message from a specific spot in the file, but the message wasn't
> > > > there.  The summary is like an index of the mailbox contents, which
> > > > includes a 'summary' of each message (like subject, etc), as well as
> > > > (for mbox files) a pointer to the start of the message inside the mbox.
> > > > The error is basically when that pointer doesn't match the file.
> > > >
> > > > Is there anything that happens to start it happening?  Like running out
> > > > of disk or something like that?  There's a long-outstanding bug for this
> > > > one, but i haven't a clue how to fix it.
> > > >
> > > > Theoretically it should only happen if the mailbox is modified by
> > > > another client *while* evolution has the mailbox locked and does
> > > > processing on it.  Or perhaps if you run out of disk space.  It should
> > > > alos automatically repair itself when it can, but obviuosly this isn't
> > > > happening either.
> > >
> > > Thanks. This is very helpful. The problem actually hasn't happened in
> > > awhile. I've got 1.0 running now as well, so I'll hope that it's somehow
> > > disppeared for good.
> >
> > Ahh good, hopefully yes.
> >
> > > The folders shouldn't be open by any other applications. I use procmail
> > > to filter my mail into stand ~/mail/ folders which are all symlinked to
> > > ~/evolution/local/Inbox/subfolders/..
> >
> > Uh, this actually IS the sort of problem I was talking about.  If you do
> > this, you will definetly be accessing the folders with another
> > application while evolution is. But so long as procmail actually locks
> > the folders, it should be safe (if it doesn't, well you could lose
> > mail).
> >
> > You may want to investigate using 'maildir' as your mailbox format, with
> > that you can have pine and evolution point directly to the same tree
> > with no problems.
> >
> > Hopefully at some point we'll support having multiple subdirs with our
> > 'spool' type (its listed as 'mbox spool files' in the account creation
> > wizard), and then you should just be able to point evolution at your
> > pine files directly.  Still, locking needs to be performed the same way
> > by procmail and evolution for this to work.
> >
> > > I need to do it this way so I have pine read out of ~/mail/ and access
> > > my mail remotely from a terminal.
> > >
> > > But the two mail clients are never running simultaneously.
> >
> > Yeah but procmail will write to the folders as mail arrives.
> >
> > > Anyway, I'll pay more attention to how it happens should it happen again
> > > and keep you posted.
> >
> > Cool.
> >
> >
> >
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