[14273] in Athena Bugs
SGI inc yields mailbox corruption?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John Hawkinson)
Fri Mar 29 09:49:34 1996
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 96 09:49:11 -0500
To: bugs@MIT.EDU
Cc: postmaster@MIT.EDU, skunks@MIT.EDU
From: John Hawkinson <jhawk@MIT.EDU>
Hindsight is always 20/20, I should have hit ^Z in the middle of
this.
Anyhow, I ran "inc" on opus this morning, and it seems to have
corrupted my mailbox. I'm told that some GNUS users have seen
similar problems on other platforms, so I'm cc-ing postmaster
just in case.
[opus!jhawk] ~> tail -2 /etc/athena/version
Athena Workstation (SGI) Version 0.8F Tue Mar 19 15:31:07 EST 1996
So anyway, I ran inc:
[opus!jhawk] ~> inc
Incorporating new mail into inbox...
6522+ 03/29 root@limekiller.m daily insecurity output<<Checking the /etc/maste
6523 03/29 root@limekiller.m daily output<<Subject: limekiller daily run outp
6524 03/29 root@lola-granola daily insecurity output<</etc/master.passwd has
6525 03/29 root@lola-granola daily output<<Subject: lola-granola daily run ou
6526 03/29 root@zygorthian-s daily insecurity output<<Checking the /etc/maste
6527 03/29 root@zygorthian-s daily output<<Subject: zygorthian-space-raiders
6528 03/28 doug@digex.net Re: They are coming to take me away....<<You say
6529 03/29 briggs@puma.bevd. prototyping arch/m68k/*<<Is anyone working on th
6530 03/29 dan_grillo@next.c patches for solaris 2.4 sparc5 audio problems wi
6531 03/29 root@anxiety-clos Output from "cron" command<<Your "cron" job /usr
inc: eol encountered in field ""
??Format error (message 6532) in component 18
6532 03/28 fair@clock.org Re: Progress on the "Everything dumps core" prob
inc: eol encountered in field ""
??Format error (message 6533) in component 1
6533 03/29*
inc: eol encountered in field ""
??Format error (message 6534) in component 1
6534 03/29*
inc: eol encountered in field ""
??Format error (message 6535) in component 1
6535 03/29*
inc: eol encountered in field ""
??Format error (message 6536) in component 1
6536 03/29*
inc: eol encountered in field ""
??Format error (message 6537) in component 1
6537 03/29*
6538 empty
That didn't look happy.
Unfortunately, it removed the messages from the POP server:
[opus!jhawk] ~> pop
pop: c
pop: s
0 messages, 0 bytes.
pop:
Oh well. Reading through the messages, the first few displayed just fine.
6532 had a clear problem, however:
[opus!jhawk] ~infoagents/lib> rmm ; next
(Message inbox:6532)
Received: from PACIFIC-CARRIER-ANNEX.MIT.EDU by po9.MIT.EDU (5.61/4.7) id AA2145
9; Fri, 29 Mar 96 05:22:53 EST
Received: from pain.lcs.mit.edu by MIT.EDU with SMTP
id AA07416; Fri, 29 Mar 96 05:22:52 EST
Received: (from daemon@localhost) by pain.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/8.6.12) id EAA19654
; Fri, 29 Mar 1996 04:48:29 -0500 (EST)
Received: from gaia.internex.net by pain.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/8.6.12) with SMTP id
EAA19522 for <port-sun3@NetBSD.ORG>; Fri, 29 Mar 1996 04:37:48 -0500 (EST)
Received: from [198.68.110.3] by gaia.internex.net (8.6.9/InterNex-SM8.6.9)
id BAA06592; Fri, 29 Mar 1996 01:32:51 -0800
X-Sender: eef-info@cesium.clock.org
Message-Id: <v02140b00ad810d63558a@[204.94.116.237]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Date: Thu, 28 Mar 1996 23:32:52 -1000
To: gwr@mc.com
From: "Erik E. Fair" (Time Keeper) <fair@clock.org>
Subject: Re: Progress on the "Everything dumps core" problem
Cc: port-sun3@NetBSD.ORG
Sender: owner-port-sun3@NetBSD.ORG
Precedence: list
X-Loop: por
Received: from PACIFIC-CARRIER-ANNEX.MIT.EDU by po9.MIT.EDU (5.61/4.7) id AA0067
8; Fri, 29 Mar 96 07:55:05 EST
Received: from CHARON.MIT.EDU by MIT.EDU with SMTP
id AA15658; Fri, 29 Mar 96 07:55:04 EST
Received: (from root@localhost) by charon.MIT.EDU (8.6.13/2.3JIK) id HAA18660 fo
r jhawk; Fri, 29 Mar 1996 07:56:04 -0500
Date: Fri, 29 Mar 1996 07:56:04 -0500
From: System PRIVILEGED Account <root@charon.MIT.EDU>
Message-Id: <199603291256.HAA18660@charon.MIT.EDU>
To: jhawk@MIT.EDU
Subject: Output from internet-drafts.sh
stdout:
----------------------------------------------------
Creating krbtgt.ATHENA.MIT.EDU@ATHENA.MIT.EDU ticket for rcmd.charon@ATHENA.MIT.
EDU
Tickets destroyed.
package=i-d ietf.cnri.reston.va.us:/internet-drafts -> /afs/.athena/reference/in
ternet-drafts
unknown file type .backup/.backup, skipping
Got 1id-index.txt 68895
Got 1id-abstracts.txt 360323
Got draft-ietf-ipsec-hmac-md5-00.txt 19142
Got draft-rfced-info-chatel-00.txt 1868
Got draft-ietf-idr-bgp-confed-00.txt 14181
Got draft-yergeau-utf8-00.txt 12333
----------------------------------------------------
stderr:
----------------------------------------------------
[opus!jhawk] ~infoagents/lib>
In case it's not clear, The charon mirror job sends its mail every morning, so
I'm certain it wasn't part of a corrupted message from Erik. One
notes that there are 1028 characters up to the "X-Loop: por" in the message,
which is close enough to 1024 to be disturbing.
Moving right along, things again seem fine:
[opus!jhawk] ~infoagents/lib> next
(Message inbox:6537)
[It displays the message, not included here, available upon request]
And then, the final message is toast:
[opus!jhawk] ~infoagents/lib> next
(Message inbox:6538)
[opus!jhawk] ~infoagents/lib> next
next: no next message
I have no explanation for this phenomenum, but it really doesn't
seem very good. Someone is going to tell me I just shouldn't use mh, and
clearly they're right.
Perhaps inc could be rebuilt to fail to truncate mailboxes in the event
of such errors? In any event, I suppose I shall run inc -notruncate
for some time now.
--jhawk
