Mark Crispin wrote: > On Fri, 29 Sep 2006, Erik Kangas wrote: >> Unexpected short mix message file 2441261 < 2441309 > > This is not a fatal error. > > What has happened was that an expunge or checkpoint is trying to > "burp" the data file (remove expunged messages). Before it does any > writing, it makes certain that the file data ranges used in burping do > not exceed the size of the file. If this sanity check fails, burping > of that file is cancelled and neither the file nor the pointers into > the file are altered. > > In the example you gave, it exceeded it by 48 bytes. It is very > strange that this happened, especially since 48 is much smaller than > any plausible message size. > > I wonder if there was some locking problem. What operating system are > you using? Are you using NFS? > >> What does this mean? Is it a fatal error, or is something else going on? > > It's not a fatal error. Part of the design of mix is that the code > detects that it's about to do something wrong and not do it. > > Mix is also designed to be "self-healing". If a locking failure causes > it to get inconsistant data between the index and the data files, it > will not act on the inconsistant data; instead it backs off. Since > this was just a burp, it doesn't really matter (other than failing to > reduce disk space) that the burp did not happen. > > If at a later time the data becomes consistant, then mix proceeds as > if there never was a problem. > > This doesn't mean that it's safe to do foolish things such as access > mix over NFS (which disables locking). Mix dodges a lot of bullets; > but it's best not to fire bullets at it in the first place.... ;-) > >> I went to the same folder today and tried to "mailutil copy" it to >> another folder and it worked without issues ... indicating to me that >> the folder seems "fine" at the moment. > > Try making a copy of that mailbox with "cp -r" instead of "mailutil > copy". Now, delete a message in the copy and do another expunge. Does > the problem still happen? If so, I would be very interested in looking > at the mailbox and analyzing what happened.
Hello, I am seeing this error on about 5 different folders. Each night we try to delete a few messages (if needed) and do an delete / expunge. These same folders produce the same "short mix message file" error every night every time the script runs on them. I manually copied (cp -a) one of these to a separate location to run some tests: ~~~~~~~~~~~ /usr/local/bin/mailutil check /root/tmp/INBOX 2 new message(s) (57 unseen), 690 total in /root/tmp/INBOX ~~~~~~~~~~~ /usr/local/bin/mailutil prune /root/tmp/INBOX UNSEEN Unexpected short mix message file 5537837 < 5537971 57 message(s) purged ~~~~~~~~~~~ /usr/local/bin/mailutil prune /root/tmp/INBOX SEEN 633 message(s) purged ~~~~~~~~~~~ /usr/local/bin/mailutil check /root/tmp/INBOX No new messages, 0 total in /root/tmp/INBOX ~~~~~~~~~~~ So, is this error expected to happen until "some time in the future" when imapd decides to fix the folder? Should I update my log callback handler to suppress this message as innocuous? Or is the fact that this happens night after night on the same folders and apparently not on others something to worry about? Thank you, -Erik Kangas _______________________________________________ Imap-uw mailing list Imap-uw@u.washington.edu https://mailman1.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/imap-uw
