Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!apple!oliveb!amdahl!pacbell!dsinc!syd
From: syd@DSI.COM (Syd Weinstein)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.elm
Subject: Re: Problems with newmail
Message-ID: <1989Sep18.140712.667@DSI.COM>
Date: 18 Sep 89 14:07:12 GMT
References: <278@loria.crin.fr>
Reply-To: syd@DSI.COM
Organization: Datacomp Systems, Inc.  Huntingdon Valley, PA
Lines: 37

tombre@weissenburger.crin.fr (Karl Tombre) writes:
:I have problems with newmail on a SUN 3/260 and SunOS 4.0 : I start
:newmail in my .login file, with newmail looking actually not at my sun
:mailbox but at a remote mailbox (that of the main mail server). I also
:start up a shelltool with elm running on that mailbox. But when I exit
:suntools, newmail apparently doesn't kill itself; this Monday I found
:on the console screen all the newmail messages of the weekend, from
:the newmail process I had running on Friday.
Again, if the newmail process doesn't get sighup when you logout,
it will not go away, its a simplistic program.  The suggestion
that works at many sites us:
	Configure newmail for autobackground and then start newmail
without the & on the end.  This works around the uses that use
csh where their csh disassociates the process from the terminal
when started with an &.

:I have also found another problem with newmail when running on the
:main mail server (a Convex) : I am advised that new mail has arrived.
:If I enter elm and read this new mail, then quit elm without deleting
:the new mail which has now been read, newmail tells me a second time
:that there is new mail. What is strange is that the first time, I get
:the newmail messages WITH the name of the sender, but the second time
:WITHOUT the name of the sender...
This is again due to the simplistic nature of newmail.  It just remembers
the size of the old message file and then reads from there.  However,
entering Elm and exiting adds status headers, thus the size increases.
Now it finds stuff again, only not always from the top, thus the garbage.
We are testing out a small change suggested by a user that reduces
(Note not eliminates) this effect. It will always happen if the status
messages make the file bigger by a whole message.  Without making newmail
a much more complicated program that tracks the messages it has seen,
this effect will not go away.
-- 
=====================================================================
Sydney S. Weinstein, CDP, CCP                   Elm Coordinator
Datacomp Systems, Inc.				Voice: (215) 947-9900
syd@DSI.COM or {bpa,vu-vlsi}!dsinc!syd	        FAX:   (215) 938-0235