some progress Re: mail missing between exim and mutt

[Mark Copper <mcopper@titaninterface.com>]

On Mon, Sep 01, 2008 at 01:07:45PM -0500, Mark Copper wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 31, 2008 at 07:39:32PM +0300, Andrei Popescu wrote:
> > On Fri,29.Aug.08, 15:44:14, Mark Copper wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > > 
> > > I would like to request help understanding how some email went missing.
> > > 
> > > exim's log shows the missing pieces going into maildir:
> > >    2008-08-26 18:23:08 1KY7sS-0003mR-Be => me <myaddress> R=local_us er T=maildir_home
> > > 
> > > fetchmail should have retrieved the mail:
> > >    poll myserver proto imap 
> > >        user "me", with password "secret", is "me" here, ssl
> > > 
> > > The mail log shows emails being retrieved and flushed one by one:
> > >    Aug 28 00:17:38 algol fetchmail[2677]: reading message me@myserver:1
> > >    205 of 1231 (804 header octets) (853 body octets) flushed
> > > 
> > > Only I ended up missing a number of emails.
> > > 
> > > Where could the weak link be?
> >  
> > Maybe fetchmail? Try getmail (the config is very easy to write), it 
> > would rather get the same mail twice than loose it.

Here is a partial history of one of hundreds of lost emails:

Part of the header of the lost email:

Received: from localhost
        ([127.0.0.1] helo=algol.milkyway ident=fetchmail)
        by algol.milkyway with esmtp (Exim 3.36 #1 (Debian))
        id 1KYZoW-00013U-00
        for <mark@localhost>; Thu, 28 Aug 2008 00:12:56 -0500
Received: from <server>.com [<server IP>]
        by algol.milkyway with IMAP (fetchmail-6.3.6)
        for <mark@localhost> (single-drop); Thu, 28 Aug 2008 00:12:56 -0500 (CDT)

so fetchmail has handed the mail to exim, right?

But I never received it:

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

  mark@localhost
      pipe delivery process timed out

(this is from the body of a frozen bounce--my ISP blocked it as a
"relay")


So can anyone say what might be going on here?  Why would a delivery
process time out on the local machine?  Or better, how to avoid this?
Upgrade Exim?  Avoid Exim?  Clean up the mail spool?  Anything?

Thanks.

Mark