[clug] Re: Mysterious mbox behaviour
Pearl Louis
pjl124 at rsphysse.anu.edu.au
Fri Nov 14 15:48:28 EST 2003
Hi!
Thanks to all the replies about mbox and kmail.
Just to reply to all messages in one go...
>I haven't used kmail but in many mail clients when you delete a message it
>just marks it as deleted. (Usually a header like Status: D or some such).
>IT is only when you "Compact" or "expunge" the mailbox that deleted messages
>are really deleted. So you need to find out what command kmail uses for
>that.
As I mention in my original message, I always empty the trash after deleting
more than a few messages (I've got into this habit because my system has
never been too stable and I noticed if I didn't empty the trash and the
system crashed, the deleted messages would be there again after I rebooted)
and kmail automatically compacts the folders whenever I exit. In fact I've
done it several times manually to the mailbox in question (right click,
compact). So the non-complete deletion of the messages are definitely *not*
due to not compacting the mailboxes. I think that something must be going
wrong during the compacting process and it's simply not well, compacting. I
wouldn't have even noticed it if it wasn't for the fact that I deleted half
of the messages in it (over a period of several months, so lots of regular
compacting) and noticed the size of the mailbox hadn't changed at all. Every
other sign seemed to indicate that it had been properly deleted.
>Though it sounds like kmail might be doing something like leaving stuff
>in /var/spool/mail/yourname and using it to create the mbox. What happens
>if you nuke your mail spool? Maybe run kmail through truss to see what
>files it is opening? Maybe use mutt instead?
I don't think I use /var/spool/mail as I just download the mail from the ANU
POP3 server. That doesn't go through /var/spool/mail does it?
Well I don't think I really want to use mutt as I like GUI programs. I think
I might switch to Evolution or Thunderbird. I know Thunderbird is still
what, at 0.2? But it can't have any worse bugs than this, unless it actually
decides to trash the mailbox entirely...
Pearl
More information about the linux
mailing list