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From: aven@UMDHEP.BITNET
Newsgroups: mod.computers.vax
Subject: Re: Mystery MAIL messages.
Message-ID: <860306090515.00c@umdhep>
Date: Thu, 6-Mar-86 09:15:47 EST
Article-I.D.: umdhep.860306090515.00c
Posted: Thu Mar  6 09:15:47 1986
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There is a command procedure in SYS$EXAMPLES: (I forget the name, but
there are only a few .COMs there, anyway) that will allow you to set
the NEWMAIL field in SYS$SYSTEM:VMSMAIL.DAT straight. Note that VMS
moved this counter from SYSUAF to VMSMAIL under the change to version
4.x, and of course the developers did not provide a neat way to
correct this problem! I SPR'd the problem, as I'm sure many others did
as well, but they feel that issuing the command READ/NEW 'as many times
as it takes' in the MAIL utility is an adequate solution. I sure as hell
don't. It took me all of a day to write a FORTRAN program to count the
number of messages in folder NEWMAIL in the users MAIL file, and they
can't/won't do it despite numerous SPRs.

The count gets screwed up for various reasons, such as users deleting
their mail file or perhaps the system crashing at a bad time (as if
there were good times!). Keep sending in SPR's and maybe the developers
at DEC will finally add a simple piece of code to correct the count
(probably put it in AUTHORIZE) so that users won't go nuts with phantom
messages.

Todd Aven
Softwear Sweatshop
Systems Engineering, Inc.