Re: [cobalt-users] RAQ 4i- Mailbox problem

[flash22@xxxxxxx]

On Wed, 14 Nov 2001, Gerald Waugh wrote:

> <snip>
> > Someone sent a huge file to the mailbox. The DSL connection has problems
> > tonight, too, so a browser mail program download was painfully slow. I
> > stopped it, enabled telnet momentarily, and then used Pine to delete the
> > large file. After that, the mailbox won't open. Instead, I get these
> > messages:
> >
> > 1) From Netscape Mail:
> >
> > the mail server responded:
> > (SYS/PERM) Unable to process From lines (envelopes) in
> > /var/spool/mail/domain-name;
> >
> > 2) PINE tells me:
> >
> > Can't open inbox file:/var/spool/mail/domain-name not in valid mailbox
> > format
> >
> <snip>
> Sorry for those last bogus post!!!
> Do you have a file in /home/spool/mail for the user?
> If not you can create one.
> touch /home/spool/mail/user_name
> chmod 600 /home/spool/mail/user_name
> 
> Also try sending the user an email from the server, so that the box is not empty
> and or will be created. (of course the above should do that)
> You might also try restarting smtp /etc/rc.d/init.d/sendmail restart

I'm gonna say...um..no ;)

First, it's perfectly ok for there to be no spool file, pop understands
this just fine :)

Second, here's what i suspect is the actual scenerio:

1)User got giant email
2)User tried to pop it , failed, because, there wasn't enough disk quota
  to make a copy to delete it after retreiving it. That's important,
  because:
3) Admin tried to delete it with pine, but, user still didn't have enough
quota, and pine isn't all that smart, so, pine deleted part of it,
panicked, and wrote what it could back to disk...

Now the problem is the mail spool file is corrupt, it doesn't start with a
'From ' line, so pop can't read it and won't fetch any messages...

Solution:

a) If there's nothing all that critical in it, just delete it
b) Download it, chop it up in your favorite editor, save what you must, 
   then delete it.
c) Edit the spool file, deleting lines untill the very first line in the
file is a From line, (Note, From<space> , not From<colin>
d) Edit the spool file, Insert Bogus From line ;)

Personally i'd opt for the second ;)

CAUTION: editing the spool file directly will cause any inbound email
received for that user while editing to be lost!! beware ;)

Safest is download/delete, if you want to be ultra safe, stop mail
services for a minute or so while you do it ;)

PS: check user quota ;)

gsh