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Re: fetchmail/procmail lost messages
Jason Tishler <jason <at> tishler.net> writes:
>
> Kelly,
>
> On Thu, Apr 22, 2004 at 05:59:06PM -0700, Kelly Felkins wrote:
> > For example, today the hard drive that I use for both the spool file
> > and my mail boxes was off-line. Five messages to /dev/null.
> >
> > I'm inclined to think this is a bad design. Or have I got it
> > configured incorrectly?
>
> Possibly.
>
> I highly recommend using a spool file that is *always* on-line (e.g.,
> /var/spool/mail/$LOGNAME). Nevertheless, fetchmail should not have
> flushed the message if procmail exited with a nonzero status.
>
> BTW, I have used Cygwin fetchmail/procmail to process my mail for about
> 3 years. I process more 10,000 emails per month. So, I have processed
> more than 300,000 messages during this time period. AFAICT, I have not
> lost a single message.
>
> Jason
>
Thanks for responding. Your suggestion for locating the spool file is wise. A
few questions:
- How do you know you haven't lost messages? It appears that the only notice I
get is a brief message on my console, just before the message about "flushing"
-- it's a bad feeling to see an error message, followed by "flushing".
- Any suggestions for diagnosing the problem? It seems like procmail should
return an error code, and fetchmail should respond to that error code - this is
apparently not happening. I don't know if procmail is not returning an error
status, or if fetchmail is ignoring it. How can I verify this?
When everything is configured correctly the system works nicely. But I have to
say that I am deeply troubled that when there is a problem it looses messages.
Any other suggestions? Like, should I dump fetchmail or procmail or both? Any
recommended alternatives?
Thanks very much.
-Kelly
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