Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!rutgers!apple!bbn!gateway!nmsu.EDU!jthomas
From: jthomas@nmsu.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Problems with large RMAIL files?
Message-ID: <8908281623.AA09730@NMSU.Edu>
Date: 28 Aug 89 16:23:24 GMT
References: <65300@linus.UUCP>
Organization: BBN news/mail gateway
Lines: 22

chris> We are experiencing strange behavior with RMAIL.  Messages in
chris> large files (folders) appear to be truncated, and new messages
chris> are inserted in strange places on occasion.  Once, a large
chris> number of NULLS were inserted into the folder, where the rest of
chris> the message should have been. Talk about junk mail!  Usually, I
chris> bring in new messages into a new RMAIL buffer, and then ship
chris> them out to other folders using the 'o' command.

chris> I'm not a lisp hacker, so any insight would be appreciated.

You don't say what kind of machine/OS/file system you are using.  Please
do.

I've seen that effect under SunOS 3.2 and 3.4 under NFS with gnu emacs
18.51 .  I haven't had any large files recently under 3.5 / haven't had the
problem any more (your guess is as good as mine ::-{(} ).

What size is "large"?  My problems seemed to start at ~600K .  Are the
blocks of nulls in multiples of disk blocks ( e.g., 512 bytes)?  Do they
start at disk block boundaries?

Jim Thomas        jthomas@nmsu.edu