Mutt loses mail

[John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org>]

Friends,

I have just submitted this bug report.  I do not have a number for it yet,
or else mutt munged that message too :-)

I consider this to be a very serious issue, probably relating to coding
problems in mutt.  Who knows how many Debian-related mails I may have
missed?  (hmm, good excuse for not closing bug reports, eh? <g>)

For the moment, I guess my mail reader is sed :-)

Now, perish the thought, I have been in an environment where there was a
similar NFS-mount for files, and Pine was the mailer used.  On some systems,
it was dealing with Debian Linux machines only, just like I am here. 
Sometimes, the client was SunOS or the server was.  It NEVER did this.  I
have been suspecting something odd with mutt for some time, but only
confirmed it tonight.  I would consider, based solely on prima facie
appearances, that mutt has some serious design flaw with its locking.

John

----- Forwarded message from John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> -----

Date: Sun, 3 Jan 1999 18:57:02 -0600
From: John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org>
Subject: mutt: Mail can be lost from inbox!
To: submit@bugs.debian.org

Package: mutt
Version: 0.95-1
Severity: critical

Here is the sequence of events:

1. I am in my inbox index view.
2. A new mail arrives, placed into the inbox.  Mutt does not yet see this
   mail -- I believe even trying to scroll past the bottom of the
   list doesn't help.
3. I run ls, on the mail server

garfield ~$ ls -l /var/spool/mail/jgoerzen 
-rw-rw----   1 jgoerzen mail       397477 Jan  3 18:52 /var/spool/mail/jgoerzen

I also confirm, by using tail, that a message is there.

4. I press $ to resync mailbox or q to quit, having NOT marked anything
   for deletion.

5. I run ls again:

garfield ~$ ls -l /var/spool/mail/jgoerzen 
-rw-rw----   1 jgoerzen mail       397194 Jan  3 18:51 /var/spool/mail/jgoerzen

6. The message has disappeared from the mailbox forever!

Relevant parts of ~/.muttrc:

set editor=joe

mailboxes /var/spool/mail/jgoerzen

mailboxes =abuse
mailboxes =aclug-announce
mailboxes =aclug-l
mailboxes =archive
mailboxes =catlists
mailboxes =debian-alpha
mailboxes =debian-announce
mailboxes =debian-bugs
mailboxes =debian-changes

etc, etc...

procmail is the delivery agent.  The mail server and spool resides on
garfield.  My workstation is erwin, which uses NFS to get to the mail:

erwin ~$ ls -l /var/spool/mail
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root           25 Dec 21 23:27 /var/spool/mail -> /garfield/var/spool/mail/

Similarly:

erwin ~$ ls -l Mail
lrwxrwxrwx   1 jgoerzen jgoerzen        6 Dec 21 23:28 Mail -> g/Mail
erwin ~$ ls -l g
lrwxrwxrwx   1 jgoerzen jgoerzen       24 Dec 21 23:26 g -> /garfield/home/jgoerzen/

for the folders.

-- System Information
Debian Release: 2.1
Kernel Version: Linux erwin 2.1.132 #1 Sat Dec 26 12:31:03 CST 1998 alpha unknown

Versions of the packages mutt depends on:
ii  libc6.1         2.0.7u-5       The GNU C library version 2 (run-time files)
ii  slang1          1.2.2-2        The S-Lang programming library - runtime ver
ii  slang1          1.2.2-2        The S-Lang programming library - runtime ver
ii  sendmail        8.9.1-15       A powerful mail transport agent.
	^^^ (Provides virtual package mail-transport-agent)

----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
John Goerzen   Linux, Unix consulting & programming   jgoerzen@complete.org |
Developer, Debian GNU/Linux (Free powerful OS upgrade)       www.debian.org |
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