Alpine: opening another instance hangs if replying on first

[unruh]

I graduated (?) to alpine and am having trouble. In pine I was able to
open another instance of pine which replying to an email in the first
instance. However with the alpine I have, if I try to open the inbox of
the second instance while replying in the first instance, the seond one
hangs if I try to open the inbox. I often want to check up on something
in some email while replying to an email. This makes it impossible.
I believe this to be a bug ( or maybe it is some configuration option I
do not know about).

Thanks.

[Allodoxaphobia]

On Thu, 01 Mar 2012 01:43:27 GMT, unruh wrote:
> I graduated (?) to alpine and am having trouble.

Gee, I wonder what OS you might be using...

[unruh]

Linux. Mandriva 2010.1 alpine-2.00-6.1mdv2010.1.i586.rpm
Problem again is that if I am running one instance of alpine and in
particular composing a message, another instance of alpine starting up
goes into an eternal wait while trying to open INBOX ( and sometimes
even if the first instance is just open, not composing)
This seems to be a bug. It certainly did not happen with pine.

[cha...@washington.edu]

On Mar 7, 12:02 am, unruh <un...@invalid.ca> wrote:

> Linux. Mandriva 2010.1 alpine-2.00-6.1mdv2010.1.i586.rpm
> Problem again is that if I am running one instance of alpine and in
> particular composing a message, another instance of alpine starting up
> goes into an eternal wait while trying to open INBOX ( and sometimes
> even if the first instance is just open, not composing)
> This seems to be a bug. It certainly did not happen with pine.

My hunch is that the locking mechanism is different. Try seeing if
changing the format of the inbox (e.g. from unix to mbx or mix) makes
this problem go away.

--
Eduardo
http://patches.freeiz.com/alpine/

[Holger Marzen]

I use alpine with IMAP-folders on Linux and it's absolutely no problem
having several alpines open.

[Kees Theunissen]

No problem at all with alpine 2.00 on Slackware 13.37 (32 bits).
I'm using several mailbox files in the plain old unix mbox format.

When I open a mailbox twice I get this message in the first instance
of alpine:

[Another email program is accessing INBOX. Session now Read-Only.]

Followed by:

[Another email program is accessing ...some/dir/file_name. Session now
Read-Only.]

Same behavior (= switching to read only) but without the messages
when I'm composing a reply in the first instance. I use vim instead of
pico as editer.

Regards,

Kees.

--
Kees Theunissen.

[unruh]

On 2012-03-07, Kees Theunissen <theu...@rijnh.nl> wrote:
> Holger Marzen wrote:
>> * On Tue, 6 Mar 2012 22:42:21 -0800 (PST), cha...@washington.edu wrote:
>>
>>> On Mar 7, 12:02 am, unruh<un...@invalid.ca> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Linux. Mandriva 2010.1 alpine-2.00-6.1mdv2010.1.i586.rpm
>>>> Problem again is that if I am running one instance of alpine and in
>>>> particular composing a message, another instance of alpine starting up
>>>> goes into an eternal wait while trying to open INBOX ( and sometimes
>>>> even if the first instance is just open, not composing)
>>>> This seems to be a bug. It certainly did not happen with pine.
>>>
>>> My hunch is that the locking mechanism is different. Try seeing if
>>> changing the format of the inbox (e.g. from unix to mbx or mix) makes
>>> this problem go away.
>>
>> I use alpine with IMAP-folders on Linux and it's absolutely no problem
>> having several alpines open.
>
> No problem at all with alpine 2.00 on Slackware 13.37 (32 bits).
> I'm using several mailbox files in the plain old unix mbox format.
>
> When I open a mailbox twice I get this message in the first instance
> of alpine:
>
> [Another email program is accessing INBOX. Session now Read-Only.]
>
> Followed by:
>
> [Another email program is accessing ...some/dir/file_name. Session now
> Read-Only.]

Same here.

>
> Same behavior (= switching to read only) but without the messages
> when I'm composing a reply in the first instance. I use vim instead of
> pico as editer.

I also use vi, but for me if I am editing a response while opening another
session, the second one goes into an eternal wait state while loading
the inbox. (It says it is loading the INBOX but never completes.)

>
> Regards,
>
> Kees.
>

[Allodoxaphobia]

Same here under FreeBSD. I see the "spinner" for several seconds; then
the "............. Session now Read-Only.]" message appears.

Jonesy
--
Marvin L Jones | jonz | W3DHJ | linux
38.24N 104.55W | @ config.com | Jonesy | OS/2
* Killfiling google & XXXXbanter.com: jonz.net/ng.htm

[cha...@washington.edu]

This is not a problem of local vs imap access, it is a problem of if
the folder format allows concurrent access. The
default format for folders in the UW server does not allow it, but you
can change the default This means that even during IMAP access you
might not be able to access a folder from two different places. It is
all about the format of the folder. Formats that support concurrent
access include maildir and mix and mbx (which I have had a really bad
experience, so I highly discourage it!)

--
Eduardo
http://patches.freeiz.com/alpine/

[unruh]

On 2012-03-09, cha...@washington.edu <cha...@washington.edu> wrote:

> On Mar 7, 7:45?am, Holger Marzen <hol...@marzen.de> wrote:
>> * On Tue, 6 Mar 2012 22:42:21 -0800 (PST), cha...@washington.edu wrote:
>>

>> > On Mar 7, 12:02?am, unruh <un...@invalid.ca> wrote:
>>
>> > My hunch is that the locking mechanism is different. Try seeing if
>> > changing the format of the inbox (e.g. from unix to mbx or mix) makes
>> > this problem go away.
>>
>> I use alpine with IMAP-folders on Linux and it's absolutely no problem
>> having several alpines open.
>
> This is not a problem of local vs imap access, it is a problem of if
> the folder format allows concurrent access. The
> default format for folders in the UW server does not allow it, but you
> can change the default This means that even during IMAP access you
> might not be able to access a folder from two different places. It is
> all about the format of the folder. Formats that support concurrent
> access include maildir and mix and mbx (which I have had a really bad
> experience, so I highly discourage it!)

In my case (I am the OP) the folder format is the old Unix mail
(/var/spool/mail) and under pine everything works fast and
unproblematically (except of course when one of the versions saves the
folder with changes and the other version of pine gets confused.-- It is
obvious so I am willing to live with that. In alpine, if I open a second
instance it always takes a longer time than the first, and if the first
is composing a mail, the second refuses to open the inbox at all.
Possibly some lock, but then the second should say that-- cannot open
inbox because it is locked-- instead of going into an eternal funk.

And why in the world would it open that lock only when the first is
composing a message? Something in the process got seriously damaged in
the conversion to alpine.

What IS weird is that many have said it is fine for them. That suggests
that
a) I have misconfigured something. Any clues as to what?
b) Mandriva has altered something in their version of alpine-- I cannot
see how their patches could have done it, but it is possible I guess.

>
> --
> Eduardo
> http://patches.freeiz.com/alpine/

[cha...@washington.edu]

On Mar 9, 11:27 am, unruh <un...@invalid.ca> wrote:

> In my case (I am the OP) the folder format is the old Unix mail
> (/var/spool/mail) and under pine everything works fast and
> unproblematically (except of course when one of the versions saves the
> folder with changes and the other version of pine gets confused.-- It is
> obvious so I am willing to live with that. In alpine, if I open a second
> instance it always takes a longer time than the first, and if the first
> is composing a mail, the second refuses to open the inbox at all.
> Possibly some lock, but then the second should say that-- cannot open
> inbox because it is locked-- instead of going into an eternal funk.

I am sorry that you are frustrated by this problem. I do not have a
machine running Mandriva so that I could help you, but is it clear
that the problem you are describing is happening only in your
distribution. I do not know what patches Mandriva applies, but if I
knew I could help you figure out what they do. You can send them to me
to "c h a p p a @ washington.edu" (no spaces). Also, see what
were the parameters passed to the configure script during the build
process.

>
> And why in the world would it open that lock only when the first is
> composing a message? Something in the process got seriously damaged in
> the conversion to alpine.

not necessarily. It might be something simple, but we can just
hypothesize now, it might be that Mandriva decided to switch the
locking routines, or maybe the permissions that you have to write
locks in /tmp are not quite right, or it might be that Mandriva builds
c-client separately from Alpine and your version of Alpine does not
work with the one installed in Mandrive, or who knows, there are so
many possibilities. You might just have to ask in the Mandrival
bugzilla to see if the Mandriva experts know. I can not predict what
is an appropriate answer, but I can tell you that others are not
having that problem, nor I am having it.

Sometimes you can see where the problem comes from if you build Alpine
from source by yourself without any patches. That would rule out any
patches, or would actually pinpoint the problem. If you can not do
that, maybe someone in Mandriva can provide you with an unpatched
version that you can test and see if that is the source of the problem
you are describing.

--
Eduardo
http://patches.freeiz.com/alpine/

[unruh]

On 2012-03-09, cha...@washington.edu <cha...@washington.edu> wrote:

Thanks. What I did was to revert to my old version of pine from 3 years
ago, and things work well. When I have time I will do some further
digging to figure out what in the world is going on. I think that it
must be some sort of configuration problem. I hoped that someone would
be able to say "You have the wrong OpenPineEditorLock defined idiot." (I
am making that up) to save me extensive debugging. For all I know it is
because of some weird interaction between the specific version of
alpine, and some library.
Anyway, Thanks. I have the very valuable data point that others are not
having problems, which really does help.


>
> --
> Eduardo
> http://patches.freeiz.com/alpine/

[William Unruh]

4 years later I am having the same problem with both Alpine 2.03(comes with Mageia 5)
and 2.20 ( which I specially compiled) on Mageia 5. 2.20 has no
patches.

configure in the rpm spec file is
configure2_5x --without-krb5 \
--without-tcl \
--with-c-client-target=lfd \
--with-passfile=.alpine.passfile \
--with-system-pinerc=%{_sysconfdir}/pine.conf
--with-system-fixed-pinerc=%{_sysconfdir}/pine.conf.fixed

I also get a hangup on the second alpine if on the first I have a odp
attachment opened with libreoffice. The second just sits there forever
spinning while the libreoffice is open. It also does it when vi is open
editing a reply in the first alpine.




>
>
>>
>> --
>> Eduardo
>> http://patches.freeiz.com/alpine/

[William Unruh]

It seems that every time up upgrade, I forget the way that this problem
was solved (getting old).

Mageia sets /var/spool/mail permissions to 2775. That causes the
problems. Changing that to 1777 and alpine now works.

Perhaps having alpine issue an error messages something like
"/var/spool/mail should have permissions 1777" would be useful.
Or also having it time out if you are trying to open a new version and
it cannot write whatever the files it needs, and telling you that the
permissions are problematic.


>
>
>
>
>>
>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Eduardo
>>> http://patches.freeiz.com/alpine/