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Re: Mysterious extra character

1997-07-23 09:10:00
"Philip" == Philip Guenther <guenther(_at_)gac(_dot_)edu> writes:

Philip> Gilbert Laycock <gtl1(_at_)mcs(_dot_)le(_dot_)ac(_dot_)uk> writes:
Several times a week I get an entry like this in my log file:

From debian-user(_at_)lists(_dot_)debian(_dot_)org  Wed Jul 23 01:29:37 1997
Subject: Re: Adaptec 2940Ultra Wide PCI SCSI Host Adapter
Folder: list.debian.in                                           1890
Folder: /home/gtl1/MailIn/mbox.in                                   1

An extra character is written to mbox.in (my DEFAULT mailbox), which
then goes on to cause problems with my mail-reader (which is
Gnus). 

Extracting the message from my backup directory, I cannot see anything 
unusual about it, but I don't really know what I am looking for. If I
resubmit the message with 
formail -s procmail -m .procmailrc < badmessage
then it works OK.

Philip> The -m flag clears the DEFAULT variable, thus explaining why
Philip> you don't see it there.  Try resubmitting the message with

Philip> procmail < badmessage

Philip> (It's only a single message, so there's no need to split it
Philip> with formail, and procmail will use the correct procmailrc by
Philip> default.)

Thanks, this lets me reproduce it at will.

[pause while I cut bits out of my .procmailrc until the problem goes
away] 

It turned out that I had a broken "duplicate deletion" recipe. I have
replaced it with the one from the procmailex man page, and that looks
like it may have cured the problem. It looked like the cache of
message ids was corrupt, too.

The broken recipe looked like
  :0 Hfw : formail.multiple_id_filter
  |formail -D 10240 $MAILDIR/idcache -s
I have no idea where I got it from, or why I thought it would work,
but it had been like that for a couple of years I think...


-- 

  Gilbert Laycock                 email:          
gtl1(_at_)mcs(_dot_)le(_dot_)ac(_dot_)uk
  Maths and Computer Science,     http://www.mcs.le.ac.uk/~glaycock
  Leicester University            phone:         (+44) 116 252 3902

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