Re: messages that jam mail readers
On Tue, 4 Aug 1998, Taren wrote: I just went through the same exact situation with sendmail/procmail. The problem isn't with your system, or any software you're running on it. What is happening is that you're receiving email from either spoofed addresses which can't be resolved by your DNS server, or from site(s) on the net which are currently unreachable (which was my case). If it's the latter, wait a while (maybe up to several days), until the net problem is resolved. The problem is, when it can't get a particular e-mail, it can't get any e-mail that arrives at my ISP after that particular one. I don't know of anyone who wants to leave their e-mail sitting for several days. I much prefer just deleting that particular e-mail and moving on to the rest of my e-mail. Unfortunately, the script I created (ppp-mail) calls ppp-on, waits until ip-up creates a file (as a signal that the connection is up), does fetchmail , sleeps for 5 minutes then does a killall fetchmail and ppp-off doesn't do two things: 1. It has no provision for the possibility of fetchmail still being in action after 5 minutes (for example someone attaches a large file to an e-mail) 2. It has no way of handling a situation where fetchmail has stalled and needs to be restarted. Obviously, my scripting skills aren't that great. BTW, if someone else has created a script (or program or whatever) called ppp-mail, I'm sure this is a different one. I made this from scratch and just gave it whatever name came to mind. -- Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] /dev/null
Re: messages that jam mail readers
In [EMAIL PROTECTED], on 08/04/98 at 02:15 PM, Taren [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: I just went through the same exact situation with sendmail/procmail. The problem isn't with your system, or any software you're running on it. What is happening is that you're receiving email from either spoofed addresses which can't be resolved by your DNS server, or from site(s) on the net which are currently unreachable (which was my case). Why is the email program looking up the sender then? It seems unnecessry, wasting time and bandwith like that. An attempt to avoid fake mail? If so, it shouldn't hang but skip the offending message. My current mail software (under os2) happily accept mail from anywhere - if it gets to the ISP then it gets to me. Mail from unreachable sites should definitely not be a problem. There are still sites connected by UUCP that aren't reachable at all. On my system, my email program(s) don't hang... I've no idea why fetchmail does. I use - as I indicated above - sendmail, procmail, and - I didn't mention before, mailx. When I get an email whose sender's domain won't resolve, the email sits in the 'inbox' area, and an error message is sent to the sendmail admin, as well as being logged in the mail error log. Once the domain is resolvable, the suspect email is then delivered as normal. The situation where fetchmail hangs is something which needs to be addressed with the package maintainer/software developer. Taren -- Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] /dev/null
Re: messages that jam mail readers
On Tue, Aug 04, 1998 at 05:21:52PM -0700, Patrick Olson wrote: Unfortunately, the script I created (ppp-mail) calls ppp-on, waits until ip-up creates a file (as a signal that the connection is up), does fetchmail , sleeps for 5 minutes then does a killall fetchmail and ppp-off doesn't do two things: 1. It has no provision for the possibility of fetchmail still being in action after 5 minutes (for example someone attaches a large file to an e-mail) 2. It has no way of handling a situation where fetchmail has stalled and needs to be restarted. Obviously, my scripting skills aren't that great. I just thought of an interesting fix for this... (note my shell scripting sucks...but you should be able to get the general idea from this..also I just cooked this up...pulled it right out of my ass) #!/bin/bash # note im not making ppp-mail is just a place holder # ...its an example anyway ;) if [ -f /var/run/ppp-mail ] fetchmail rm -f /var/run/ppp-mail exit 0 fi touch /var/run/ppp-mail $0 # If you didn't have the test above this would make a mess exit 0 -- /* -- Stephen Carpenter [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- [EMAIL PROTECTED] */ E-mail Bumper Stickers: A FREE America or a Drug-Free America: You can't have both! honk if you Love Linux -- Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] /dev/null
Re: messages that jam mail readers
On Tue, 4 Aug 1998, Taren wrote: In my case, I don't think it's a problem with fetchmail itself, because any email that hangs fetchmail just happens to hang Hotmail when Hotmail tries to display it after retrieving it from my ISP via POP. The situation where fetchmail hangs is something which needs to be addressed with the package maintainer/software developer. Taren -- Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] /dev/null
Re: messages that jam mail readers
On Wed, 5 Aug 1998, Stephen J. Carpenter wrote: 1. It has no provision for the possibility of fetchmail still being in action after 5 minutes (for example someone attaches a large file to an e-mail) 2. It has no way of handling a situation where fetchmail has stalled and needs to be restarted. Obviously, my scripting skills aren't that great. I just thought of an interesting fix for this... for my scripting skills or the problem with my script? :) (note my shell scripting sucks...but you should be able to get the general idea from this..also I just cooked this up...pulled it right out of my ass) Hey, at least you had an idea. I'm not even sure what all of it means. #!/bin/bash # note im not making ppp-mail is just a place holder # ...its an example anyway ;) if [ -f /var/run/ppp-mail ] fetchmail rm -f /var/run/ppp-mail exit 0 fi This checks to see if /var/run/ppp-mail exists as an ordinary file, then runs fetchmail if it is. When fetchmail finishes, it deletes /var/run/ppp-mail. Right? Does the exit 0 end the script right then and there or what? touch /var/run/ppp-mail This creates an empty /var/run/ppp-mail file, right? $0 # If you didn't have the test above this would make a mess What's the $0 for? exit 0 Hmm... another one of these. I think it makes sense to have one at the end of the script, although mine doesn't and it works. What I don't understand (because I'm clueless), is what testing for, removing and creating /var/run/ppp-mail would accomplish. Below is my script (with the boring connect/disconnect stuff removed). Any input is welcome. If you can give me a clue as to how your idea would fit into this mess, that would be great. #!/bin/sh # # Stuff to initiate ppp connection # # /home/pppusers/pppd.log is created by ip-up when connection # is established. This waits for that to happen. until test -r /home/pppusers/pppd.log do sleep 5s done fetchmail sleep 4m killall fetchmail # Stuff to kill ppp connection below -- Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] /dev/null
Re: messages that jam mail readers
I have received several e-mails from this list that cause fetchmail to stall. There is something wrong with the individual e-mails, as Hotmail can't quite handle them either. Although Hotmail retrieves them from the POP server, the web browser stalls while displaying them. I just deleted the first three (by hitting control C then typing fetchmail again, then it regards the message as seen), but decided to look at the last two and find out what was going on. They're both from this list, and both have WYSIWYG Word Processor as their subject. What's more, both stall while loading after the lines -BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK- and Version 3.1 I'm going to guess that this geek code block is responsible for the problems, since both Hotmail and fetchmail have problems with the same messages. I'm not accusing anyone of doing this on purpose or anything. I would like to stay on this list, but it's not worth putting up with e-mail problems. Please do your best to make sure that what you send is not going to cause anyone problems. If e-mail you have sent is the culprit, you will be receiving e-mail from me politely asking you not to jam up my e-mail and asking for information that will help me piece together the cause of the problem. Has anyone else had this problem with their mail? Could someone who understands what is causing this problem explain it to me? Of course I fogot to write down the error message, but I also had problems getting fetchmail to get three messages (they were all from the same person). The error message was something like: SMTP error: hostname must resolve and it promptly refused to fetch any mail. -- +Peter Granroth+ Microsoft is NOT the answer + + mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] + Microsoft is the question + +http://granroth.ml.org+ The answer is NO+ -- Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] /dev/null
Re: messages that jam mail readers
On Mon, 3 Aug 1998, Patrick Olson wrote: I have received several e-mails from this list that cause fetchmail to stall. There is something wrong with the individual e-mails, as Hotmail can't quite handle them either. Although Hotmail retrieves them from the POP server, the web browser stalls while displaying them. . I would like to stay on this list, but it's not worth putting up with e-mail problems. Please do your best to make sure that what you send is not going to cause anyone problems. If e-mail you have sent is the culprit, you will be receiving e-mail from me politely asking you not to jam up my e-mail and asking for information that will help me piece together the cause of the problem. Has anyone else had this problem with their mail? Could someone who understands what is causing this problem explain it to me? I receive mail from this list in digest form and did not experience such problem with mail from the list. However the same thing happened to me several times caused by spam. Every time I have to phone in to my ISP and ask them to delete the message as they do not allow me to telnet and do it that way. I would also like to know how this can be solved. Johann -- | Johann Spies Windsorlaan 19 | | [EMAIL PROTECTED]3201 Pietermaritzburg | | Tel/Faks Nr. +27 331-46-1310 Suid-Afrika (South Africa) | -- Love is patient,love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. I Corinthians 13:4-7 -- Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] /dev/null
Re: messages that jam mail readers
Johann Spies writes: I would also like to know how this can be solved. Have you tried contacting the fetchmail maintainer? -- John HaslerThis posting is in the public domain. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Do with it what you will. Dancing Horse Hill Make money from it if you can; I don't mind. Elmwood, Wisconsin Do not send email advertisements to this address. -- Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] /dev/null
Re: messages that jam mail readers
On Tue, 4 Aug 1998, Peter Granroth wrote: Has anyone else had this problem with their mail? Could someone who understands what is causing this problem explain it to me? Of course I forgot to write down the error message, but I also had problems getting fetchmail to get three messages (they were all from the same person). The error message was something like: SMTP error: hostname must resolve and it promptly refused to fetch any mail. I don't know if it's the same thing. Mine didn't bother to give me an error message. Fetchmail just sat there in the middle of retrieving the message like time was frozen. After waiting long enough to be quite sure it wasn't going to continue, I hit Control C to get out of it. -- Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] /dev/null
Re: messages that jam mail readers
On Tue, 4 Aug 1998, Johann Spies wrote: Has anyone else had this problem with their mail? Could someone who understands what is causing this problem explain it to me? I receive mail from this list in digest form and did not experience such problem with mail from the list. However the same thing happened to me several times caused by spam. Every time I have to phone in to my ISP and ask them to delete the message as they do not allow me to telnet and do it that way. That's interesting that it was caused by spam. I've never had any _technical_ problems with it. Even if it doesn't jam up my computer, spam is annoying. What program are you using for mail? I've found a way to get fetchmail to delete these messages, although it's not the most graceful: 1. Interrupt fetchmail with Control C 2. Start it again. When it starts, it says it is flushing message 1 because it has been seen. This is always the message it stalled on last time because it has already flushed all the previous messages after retrieving them. I would also like to know how this can be solved. We could always go back to using smoke signals :) -- Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] /dev/null
Re: messages that jam mail readers
On Tue, 4 Aug 1998, Peter Granroth wrote: Has anyone else had this problem with their mail? Could someone who understands what is causing this problem explain it to me? Of course I forgot to write down the error message, but I also had problems getting fetchmail to get three messages (they were all from the same person). The error message was something like: SMTP error: hostname must resolve and it promptly refused to fetch any mail. I don't know if it's the same thing. Mine didn't bother to give me an error message. Fetchmail just sat there in the middle of retrieving the message like time was frozen. After waiting long enough to be quite sure it wasn't going to continue, I hit Control C to get out of it. I just went through the same exact situation with sendmail/procmail. The problem isn't with your system, or any software you're running on it. What is happening is that you're receiving email from either spoofed addresses which can't be resolved by your DNS server, or from site(s) on the net which are currently unreachable (which was my case). If it's the latter, wait a while (maybe up to several days), until the net problem is resolved. Taren -- Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] /dev/null
