for Beartooth: Filters and dots
NM Public
Beartooth and each time you post, I get a clue. Here are two
thoughts that might help resolve things:
* How do messages get into your incoming folders? E.g., do you
use Pine filters, Procmail filters, or something else?
* I see that one of your folders is named 'novalug.old' -- I
recommend that you do not use a dot (.) in the name of any
folder. This will cause problems (or at least confusion) on an
IMAP server that uses dot (.) as the hierarchy delimiter. So,
could you rename that folder to something like 'novalug-old' and
also rename any other folder that has a dot (.) in its name. Even
if this doesn't solve the problem, it is a generally useful thing
to do.
Thanks,
Nancy
--
Nancy McGough
Infinite Ink: <http://www.ii.com/>
Bookmarks & Blog: <http://deflexion.com/>
Beartooth
> I'm still trying to figure out what is wrong with your setup
> Beartooth and each time you post, I get a clue. Here are two
> thoughts that might help resolve things:
>
> * How do messages get into your incoming folders? E.g., do you
> use Pine filters, Procmail filters, or something else?
Strictly Pine filters; procmail is one of umpteen things I've never gotten
around to learning straight up about, alas!
> * I see that one of your folders is named 'novalug.old' -- I
> recommend that you do not use a dot (.) in the name of any folder. This
> will cause problems (or at least confusion) on an IMAP server that uses
> dot (.) as the hierarchy delimiter. So, could you rename that folder to
> something like 'novalug-old' and also rename any other folder that has a
> dot (.) in its name. Even if this doesn't solve the problem, it is a
> generally useful thing to do.
I have a folder which was named "td/" -- dunno how that slash got there --
and tried to rename it td; failed; tried to rename it "d-t"; it turned
into "d-t/"; trying to open it got
PINE 4.64 FOLDER LIST Folder: INBOX 1,278 Messages +
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Folder-Collection <Incoming-Folders>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
INBOX bblx ARTEMIS Adel-inbox novalug
VA ACFG VCDL bbgA
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Folder-Collection <titan.lserv.com IMAP>
Dir: d-t/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
[No Folders in Collection]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Folder-Collection <Mail>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
sent-mail cds remote_addrbook
saved-messages cen remote_pinerc
[....]
[Now in EMPTY directory: {titan.lserv.com/novalidate-cert/user=karhunhamma]
So I tried to delete it, and got "[Empty folder collection. No folder to
delete!]" I couldn't get the cursor onto a place where I could delete the
directory -- and had to flail a bit to get back to M.
Then I got into titan on another terminal tab, and started looking. I find
a folder named mail (and none named Mail), and then a real oddity :
[karhunhammas@titan mail]$ ls d-t
[karhunhammas@titan mail]$ rmdir d-t
rmdir: `d-t': Directory not empty
[karhunhammas@titan mail]$ cd d-t
[karhunhammas@titan d-t]$ ls -a
. .. .imap
[karhunhammas@titan d-t]$ ls -a .imap
. .. fc
[karhunhammas@titan d-t]$ ls -a fc
ls: fc: No such file or directory
[karhunhammas@titan d-t]$file .imap/fc
.imap/fc: directory
[karhunhammas@titan d-t]$
I'm wondering if this nuttiness may be causing the trouble. And if so, how
I go about deleting the whole mess. Ask Ddave to do it as root, maybe?
--
Beartooth Staffwright, Wordcrafty Squirreler
FC5; Pine 4.64, Pan 0.14.2.91; Privoxy 3.0.3; CXO 5.0.1
Dillo 0.8.5, Opera 8.54, Firefox 1.5, Galeon 2.0.1
Remember I have little idea what I am talking about.
Beartooth
> On Tue, 06 Jun 2006 15:11:39 +0100, NM Public wrote:
[...]
>> * I see that one of your folders is named 'novalug.old' -- I
>> recommend that you do not use a dot (.) in the name of any folder. This
>> will cause problems (or at least confusion) on an IMAP server that uses
>> dot (.) as the hierarchy delimiter. So, could you rename that folder to
>> something like 'novalug-old' and also rename any other folder that has a
>> dot (.) in its name. Even if this doesn't solve the problem, it is a
>> generally useful thing to do.
[....]
> I'm wondering if this ["d-t/"] nuttiness may be causing the trouble. And
> if so, how I go about deleting the whole mess. Ask Ddave to do it as
> root, maybe?
Having posted that, I went back to renaming folders with dots. There were
a bunch, including at least a couple created by Ddave rather than me,
which I believe have to do with his excellent spam-filtering. Then I went
on to the next collection, which is largely but not entirely coextensive
with the titan-IMAP collection, which also has
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Folder-Collection <Mail>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
sent-mail cds recipes
saved-messages cen remote_addrbook
.addressbook centos remote_pinerc
.addressbook-2006-04-11 cert retire
.imap/ ces rh
.subscriptions cips rha
2Artemis clan rhn
[...]
I went through the rest -- maybe I shouldn't've -- spotting more with
dots, and changing them, too -- other than the ones immediately above.
Then I hit a curious thing. The ones I had changed in the titan-IMAP
collection were already changed; but when I worked my back up, the ones
with dots in the titan-IMAP collection which I had changed in <Mail> were
*not* changed -- and Pine wouldn't let me change them, on the grounds that
novalug-old and so on already existed.
I *think* the answer is to go delete the changed ones from <Mail>, then
change them in titan-IMAP, right?
But what about those first few in <Mail> that start with dots? And what
about ones like blacklist.old, whose name is probably part of Ddave's
spam-filtering??
NM Public
(or anything!) using shell commands. I recommend that you do this
through an IMAP client such as Pine. Can you please ask Ddave
these questions:
1] What hierarchy delimiter does his IMAP server use (it's
probably either '/' or '.')?
2] Where are the IMAP mailboxes located (it might be '~/mail' or
'~/Mail' or '~/Maildir' or something else).
3] What mailbox format does his IMAP server use - mbox or maildir
or something else?
4] Does he support any server-side filtering using, e.g., Sieve
or Procmail?
5] If the answer to 4 is yes, does he have a web-based client
users, such as you, can use to edit your server-side filters?
Let me know what you learn,
NM Public
fault if things are messed up. Let's wait until you get the
answer from Ddave about the hierarchy delimiter. Also, can you
tell him that you just renamed some of your mailboxes that
contained a dot (.) in the name and that this might have screwed
things up. Let him (Ddave) deal with this.
It is best if you do not touch your files or mailboxes at all,
until you hear back from Ddave.
I'm sorry if this has messed things up.
Also, can you find out if Ddave has a web-based IMAP client that
you can use to access -- and clean up -- your mailbox hierarchy?
Thanks,
Nancy
Beartooth
> Hold on Beartooth! Please do not try to rename or delete or edit
> (or anything!) using shell commands. I recommend that you do this
> through an IMAP client such as Pine.
OK -- I had a sneakin hunch I better ask first, even if I thought of a way ...
Meanwhile, I have slogged through all my pine filters *and* the archive
folder names in M S C, changing dots to hyphens. I *think* I got them all.
> Can you please ask Ddave
> these questions:
I forwarded them to me, and will forward them on with a little background
to Ddave.
[....]
> 4] Does he support any server-side filtering using, e.g., Sieve
> or Procmail?
[I *think* so; I know his filtering is above and beyond anything I could
do, and I seem to recall procmail is one of the reasons.]
> 5] If the answer to 4 is yes, does he have a web-based client users,
> such as you, can use to edit your server-side filters?
He certainly runs squirrelmail, which I get into on certain occasions --
if that much is any help; I have no idea what I can do with it other than
read and write mail, because I try to avoid it, unless I'm condemned to
an M$ machine in a library far from home, or (as sometimes happens) pine
on titan is down on his end (maybe all of titan is down), but the web
entrance lets me in.
> Let me know what you learn,
Will do.
NM Public
3a] If the answer to 3 is 'maildir', does the version of pine
running on titan support direct access to maildir mailboxes? This
is not supported by the UW, but might be in use by Ddave.
I'm including the other questions here so you can forward *this*
message to Ddave.
Thank you!
Nancy
Sur 2006-06-06, NM Public skribis:
Beartooth
> Here's another question for Ddave:
>
> 3a] If the answer to 3 is 'maildir', does the version of pine
> running on titan support direct access to maildir mailboxes? This
> is not supported by the UW, but might be in use by Ddave.
>
> I'm including the other questions here so you can forward *this*
> message to Ddave.
[....]
Done, with the addition that I had been changing dots to dashes hand over
fist, and might have trespassed on some he created.
Ddave is in California, three or four hours earlier than I am in
Virginia; so I'm liable to hear from him -- even if he gets to it today --
after you've called it a day in London, and maybe after I have. Stay tuned.
Beartooth
[...]
> Done, with the addition that I had been changing dots to dashes hand over
> fist, and might have trespassed on some he created.
>
> Ddave is in California, three or four hours earlier than I am in
> Virginia; so I'm liable to hear from him -- even if he gets to it today --
> after you've called it a day in London, and maybe after I have. Stay tuned.
No word from Ddave yet, but an odd discovery when I decided to create a
filter to move read messages from novalug (the regular folder; the
incoming one hasn't magically started working) to novalug-old. I looked
through most of my regular folders getting down to novalug, and the ones
with dash instead of dot that pine hadn't let me create yesterday were all
there, presumably transferred in from the <Mail> folder collection when I
logged back onto titan this morning.
ARTEMIS.old was also there, as well as ARTEMIS-old; so I deleted the one
with the dot.
The ones with initial dot are still in the <Mail> collection, and I let
them alone, as I sit d-t/.