Re: Debatch stalled

On 1 Feb 2016 Jim Nagel  wrote:

> Richard Porter  wrote on 1 Feb:
>> ... got around the impasse by moving the backup directory to a safe
>> place and creating a new one. After that the debatch completed and I
>> was able to read the messages. One message had parttial headers
>> followed by garbage and no body.

>> So the question is why the debatch stalled because of something in the
>> backup directory, the size of which was 225MB (going back to August
>> 2015 which was the point up to which I last cleared stuff out).

> Could be the plague that I had for months back in 2013. (See thread
> "debatch freezes" in this ng, 2013-15.)

> I take it you mean the folder !Newsdir.Msgserve.Backup

Well actually <POPstar$Dir>.MailDir.spool.mail.backup

I'm not using POPStar to fetch mail but that's where the incoming mail 
goes.

>    What subdirectories do you find in that folder?

backup checked defaulted and text

I'm using !SpamStamp to check messages defaulted by !AntiSpam.
MPro picks up anything written to the text directory.

> Here, I have one
> subdir for each of the four fetches I do (self, wife and lists from
> one ISP, Archive mailbox from a different ISP).
>    Do a Count on each of these subdirs.  Each should (as I understand
> it) contain a max of 72 files.

All of them are empty except backup which contained 1,872 files.

> I finally cured my plague in 2013 when I twigged this and deleted the
> oldest backups to bring it back to 72.

> My theory is that a bug in the Newsdir code tests for =72 but not for
>>72, with result that if some fluke allows files to escape deletion,
> the subdir just goes on getting fatter and fatter.

Actually 1872 = 26 x 72. Could that be more than a coincidence?

But !NewsDir got 80% of the way through debatching the message, so is 
that just the point where it tries to copy the file to backup? I would 
have thought it would do that first. In any case if it can't write the 
file it should stick out an error message and not just vegitate.

> AIUI (somebody correct me if I'm wrong), these "backup" files never
> actually get used: they are copies of what was in
> !Netfetch.Apps.!Hermes.Maildir.mailin before Hermes debatched and
> immediately deleted its own copy.

I would not expect the backup files to get used. I have made use of 
them myself to retrieve messages that I've lost. I'll keep an eye on 
the new backup directory which is now up to three files.

-- 
Richard Porter                        http://www.minijem.plus.com/
Skype: minijem2                       mailto:ricp@...
I don't want a "user experience" - I just want stuff that works.

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