Re: [Evolution] Unable to receive mail [was conversion failure...]

[Adam Tauno Williams <awilliam whitemice org>]

On Thu, 2011-07-14 at 00:20 -0700, Jonathan Ryshpan wrote:
> location of the mailbox ("Configuration Path") from which it should be
> fetched as /var/spool/mail/jonrysh, and the location and password for
> the smtp server to which outgoing mail is to be sent.  Now outgoing mail
> works fine, however...

Why not use an IMAP server?  Run one locally and deliver to that [via
LMTP] then access the mail via IMAP.  You avoid allot of permissions,
format, and concurrency issues.
<http://cyrusimap.org/>

> Incoming mail is never included.  When I click "Send/Receive" a progress
> box appears very briefly (maybe about 100 msec), about the time it has
> appeared in the past for an empty spool file, no mail in included, and
> the mail spool file is unchanged.  There is some odd stuff in an strace
> log, which is appended below.  It looks like evolution is attempting to
> access the mail spool file as a directory.  Does anyone know what's
> going on or how to fix it?

Is your local mail account set to "MBox" [assuming there is such a
setting].  Because otherwise [Maildir, MH, ...] your mail spool *is*
expected to be a directory [of many files] and not a single file [which
is what Mbox is].  

MBOX is an old format fraught with concurrency and scale issues;  you
should use something else, regardless of the mail client.