Question I get the following listing(s) on my index page:
'IMAP4 Server Data-DO NOT DELETE'
That message is inserted at the beginning of a /var/mail-style mailbox by an
IMAP Server that is based on the University of Washington's c-client software.
For example, the UofW imapd, or Sun's Solstice Internet Mail Server 2.0. The
message is referred to as "Hidden Message 0," and it contains persistent data
needed by the IMAP server.
When you use an IMAP client to read your mail (like DtMail, Netscape, Mulberry,
or Pine), the server supresses this message. But when you use an application
that opens the /var/mail-style mailbox directly -- like MHonArc -- then the
message is no longer hidden, and is inserted into the MHonArc index like any
other message.
There are three ways to deal with this:
1) Hack MHonArc to skip any message that has a Subject field of "IMAP4 Server
Data-DO NOT DELETE".
2) Do not run MHonArc directly on mailboxes that are managed by an IMAP server.
Instead, use one of the tools floating about on the net that can read the
messages from the IMAP server and write them to a local temp file; then run
MHonArc on the temp file. This insulates you from the quirks of the IMAP
server; also, it leaves you better prepared for migrating to an environment
when the server's files are not exposed (e.g., SIMS 3, Netscape Mail Server,
Cyrus, et al).
3) Don't run MHonArc on mailbox files; instead, have your mail server pipe the
messages into MHonArc when the messages are received.
<csg>
