Re: error writing to filter (bogofilter)

* Sam Varshavchik on Thursday, June 13, 2013 at 08:06:13 -0400
> Christian Ebert writes:
>> After an upgrade to Mac OS 10.8.4 (64bit) from 10.5.8 (32bit) I
>> get the following error for _some_ messages:
>> 
>> temporary failure.
>> Command output: maildrop: error writing to filter.
>> /usr/local/bin/maildrop: Unable to filter message.
>> 
>> The offending rule is rather bog standard:
>> xfilter "/usr/local/bin/bogofilter -u -e -p"
>> 
>> Trying the bogofilter suspect on an offending message however
>> seems to cause no problems:
>> 
>> $ bogofilter -u -e -p < testbogomsg 1>/dev/null
>> $ echo $?
>> 0
>> 
>> Of course I recompiled all involved programs, like maildrop,
>> bogofilter, tokyocabinet.
>> 
>> What could be the problem?
> 
> bogofilter does not read the entire contents of the message from its
> standard input. It terminates before it is read in its entirety.
> xfilter pipes the message to the external filter program that it runs.
> If xfilter detects that the pipe is broken, before it's finished
> writing the entire message to the pipe, it concludes that the external
> filter has crashed.
> 
> Given the buffering involved with pipes, you get non-predictable
> behavior that, sometimes, maildrop succesfully finishes writing the
> end of the message, which gets buffered in the pipe before the
> external command terminates without reading in its entirety. There's
> no way to detect that, so, depending on random factors, sometimes an
> error gets detected, sometimes not; and this depends in part on the
> underlying operating system platform and implementation. It's not
> surprising that different behavior is observed after upgrading.

Thanks for the explanation. However, it's not completely random,
it is replicable with certain messages.

What shall I do? Take it to the bogofilter list? Switch back to
procmail - it has no trouble with exactly the same message(s)?

-- 
\black\trash movie   _SAME  TIME  SAME  PLACE_
	       New York, in the summer of 2001

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