Re: Help interpreting logfile messages, please

On 11/20/12 6:25 PM, Ken Johnson wrote:
> These are typical logfile messages from a user who is unable to retrieve
> mail.  It might help me solve the problem if I knew the meaning of the
> various nmsgs/ndele/nseen counts.  Guessing seems inappropriate. (local user
> and server names changed).  Id string from ipop3d: '2007e'.
>
> Nov 10 00:37:41 msvr ipop3d[13146]: Login user=pat
> host=mail-xxx-yyy.google.com [209.85.xx.xx] nmsgs=20305/22171
> Nov 10 00:37:42 msvr ipop3d[13146]: Update user=pat
> host=mail-xxx-yyy.google.com [209.85.xx.xx] nmsgs=22171 ndele=0 nseen=0
> Nov 10 00:37:42 msvr ipop3d[13146]: Logout user=pat
> host=mail-xxx-yyy.google.com [209.85.xx.xx]
>
> In other background on the problem, 'grep "^From " /user/mail/pat | wc'
> gives a line count in the 200s.  'mutt -f /user/mail/copy_of_pat' parses the
> file without difficulty, and shows the 200-some messages.
Is part of the confusion that ipop3d is seeing 20K messages, but you 
only see 200+ in that file? I presume that /usr/mail/pat is his mail 
spool file (new messages that haven't been moved to his mail 
repository). Look at his home directory for the mail repository (perhaps 
~pat/INBOX, but your site may have a different name or location 
configured ) that has the 20K messages in it. [In case you don't know, 
some mail repositories are files; some are collections of files in a 
directory, depending upon the configuration.]

I'm not sure really what nseen means in this case. I would have to 
consult the RFCs. For my users, I do see things like "nmsgs=9144 ndele=0 
nseen=0" (and sometimes things like "... nseen=1"). That particular user 
does have an INBOX.

Typically at our site, we set our users up with imap. But they may 
configure pop on other machines (at home, for instance, or on a smart 
phone), and it can get confusing to them. I discourage this. Some users 
mistakenly think pop is the only way to get copies of their messages 
downloaded to their mail reader so it can be used offline.
> I would like to figure out how to get as many as possible of these 200-some
> messages delivered to the user through their preferred mail-reading system
> (gmail).  So far it seems that if any message from that troublesome set is
> in the mail spool file, things go badly as described above.
One time delivery, or always deliver a copy of any incoming mail? What 
about the 20K messages?

One time delivery of the 200 messages: Look at formail and its "-s" switch.

Delivery of new mail to the second address: Change the forwarding at 
your site for this user to deliver both to his local account and his 
gmail address.

20K: I have no particular expertise in gmail, but
http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=77695
indicates it can be accessed via imap, so I suspect the user can start 
up an imap client configured to talk to both your server and gmail and 
then just move the messages from one mailbox to another. (I would move a 
small test set before moving 20K. Note that the client is doing the 
moving, and it may take a while for this to happen. I've seen problems 
moving too large a set at once, requiring the restart of the client, and 
possibly having the client ask the server to repair the folder.)
>
> TIA,
>
> Ken
>

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