On Mon, 10 Jan 2000, Piet Barber said:
PB>Ryan Butler wrote:
PB>
PB>> Can someone tell me what program creates those annoying messages? Is it
PB>> elm? Or sendmail?
PB>>
PB>> I replaced the standard pop3d with qpopper on a system I admin to fix some
PB>> other problems, and now people keep getting these messages when they
PB>> download their mail.
PB>
PB>It's pine. You don't have to be running their imap client. For some reason,
PB>they don't think that they can keep their mail system okay without that file.
PB>
PB>It only comes up when you use pine, and then something other than pine.
I have found this thing arising even without pine if the UW-IMAP server is
used. For my part I removed the uw-imap rpm and installed gnu-pop3d which works
much better anyway!
PB>And nothing happens when you delete it. Trust me. I've deleted it before.
>From http://www.washington.edu/pine/faq/problems.html#pseudo-message
3.14 What are the messages with the subject DON'T DELETE THIS MESSAGE--FOLDER
INTERNAL DATA about?
From the Pine 4.01 Release Notes:
Beginning with version 4.00, Pine supports enhanced functionality for sites
using the standard Unix mailbox format or the MMDF mailbox format. It does this
by creating a "pseudo-message" at the beginning of the folder which holds the
following values:
unique identifier validity stamp
last assigned unique identifer
any keyword flags assigned to the mailbox
These values are essential for the correct operation of modern IMAP and POP
servers (which use persistent unique identifiers, or UIDs), but Pine also needs
them to support capabilities such as being able to mark messages as Answered
when the Reply has been postponed, and (on systems where Unix or MMDF folder
formats are not standard), the ability to create a folder in one of these
formats. (Without the pseudo message to identify the mailbox format type, the
folder would be empty and Pine would not know the desired format type for
subsequent use.)
One disadvantage of this scheme is that mailers that are not built on top
of the University of Washington's message access subroutine libraries will not
"hide" the pseudo message from users. Another disadvantage of having these
pseudo messages is that, when found in folders used to receive new messages,
some mail notification tools may be confused and behave incorrectly. There are
several solutions to this problem. For example, some sites have modified the
notification tools to ignore mailboxes whose length corresponds to the pseudo
message. However, these pseudo messages may be deemed undesirable at sites where
IMAP or POP are not used, and where it is more important to support other
unmodified mail tools than to permit Pine to be able to mark messages as
Answered when the Reply is postponed. Accordingly, Pine offers a new feature to
"quell-folder-internal-msg".
Note that this feature only relates to mailboxes in standard Unix or MMDF
format.
3.14.1 What does the quell-folder-internal-msg feature do?
This feature, introduced in Pine 4.01, determines whether or not Pine
will create "pseudo messages" in folders that are in standard Unix or
MMDF format.
Pine will normally create these pseudo messages when they are not
already present in a standard Unix or MMDF folder. Their purpose is to
record certain mailbox state data needed for correct IMAP and POP
server operation, and also for Pine to be able to mark messages as
Answered when the Reply has been postponed.
Sites which do not use IMAP/POP for remote mail access, and which need
to support mail tools that are adversely affected by the presence of
the pseudo-messages (e.g. some mail notification tools) may enable
this feature to tell Pine not to create them. Note that Pine's
"Answered" flag capability will be adversely affected if this is done.
Note too that, even if this feature is enabled, Pine will not remove
pseudo-messages when it encounters them (e.g. those created by UW's
imapd or ipopd servers.) This feature has no effect on folders that
are not in standard Unix or MMDF format, as pseudo-messages are not
needed in the other formats to record mailbox state information.
--
Chuck Mead, CTO, MoonGroup Consulting, Inc. <http://moongroup.com>
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