appending one newline to mailbox

I've got a somewhat complex setup using ASK.  I hope someone here might know
the answer to a strange problem I've seen.

In my .forward:

"| /usr/bin/spamc | /usr/bin/ask.py --loglevel=5 --logfile=/home/ezk/.ask/ask.log --home=/home/ezk --procmail | /usr/bin/procmail"

The above means that I pass all mail through spamassassin (just for
scoring), then ASK, then procmail.

My .procmailrc has this:

##############################################################################
# MH slocal sorter
:0 c
*
| /usr/lib/nmh/slocal -suppressdup -user ezk
# fwd copy to iezk if multipart mail (and stop here)
:0 H
* ^content-type:.*multipart
! [email protected]
# if didn't match multipart, see if it's an html email
:0 B
* \<html\>
! [email protected]
##############################################################################

What I do in my .procmailrc is pass the mail through MH's slocal mail sorter
(one of the rules auto-filters mail whose SA score is too high, so I can
catch potential spam that might have gotten through ASK).

The last two rules in my .procmailrc are intended to send a copy of all
mime/html mail to a special account I use only for viewing attachments.  My
usual mail reader is plain 'ol text-based (so I can read my mail even using
a vt100 terminal running over a 300 baud modem line).

I've only recently switched to procmail as the final component after ASK.
So I may have missed something important.

1. All mail that passes through procmail still gets appended to
   /var/spool/mail/ezk.  Why?  I didn't explicitly tell procmail to do so.

2. On occasion, a single newline character gets appended to
   /var/spool/mail/ezk.  I don't know why and I've not yet had the chance to
   investigate it closely (this can be a major PITA to debug).  Has anyone
   seen anything of the sort before?  Does it strike anyone as a mailbox
   locking problem?

Thanks,
Erez.


-------------------------------------------------------
This SF.net email is sponsored by: IT Product Guide on ITManagersJournal
Use IT products in your business? Tell us what you think of them. Give us
Your Opinions, Get Free ThinkGeek Gift Certificates! Click to find out more
http://productguide.itmanagersjournal.com/guidepromo.tmpl