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Re: Cygwin, mutt, Windows XP issues


On Fri, 23 May 2003, Peter Davis wrote:

> Hi, Igor,
>
> Still wrestling with these issues ...
>
> On Tue, May 20, 2003 at 01:23:22PM -0400, Igor Pechtchanski wrote:
> > On Tue, 20 May 2003, Peter Davis wrote:
> >
> > > I'm using mutt 1.4i under Cygwin on Windows XP.  My apologies for
> > > cross-posting, but I'm really not sure if the problems I'm having are
> > > mutt issues or Cygwin issues.  (Probably XP issues, but there's not
> > > much help for that.)
> > >
> > > I'm running XP on two different systems.  One (home) was formerly NT4,
> > > and one (work) was formerly Win2000.  In upgrading to both of these
> > > systems, some new problems with mutt were introduced.  Specifically:
> > >
> > > 1) Mutt no longer can tell which mailboxes contain new mail.  Once I
> > >    open the mailbox, the new messages are correctly marked, but when
> > >    I'm looking for a mailbox with unread messages, mutt doesn't detect
> > >    any.  This used to work correctly under NT4, but *not* under
> > >    Win2000.  It may have to do with changes in how Windows handles
> > >    file protections, but I've tried to un-protect these files in every
> > >    imaginable way, and still can't get this to work.
> > >
> > >    I've looked at the mutt code somewhat, and it appears that mutt is
> > >    checking the timestamp on the .mh_sequences file to detect
> > >    mailboxes with new messages, but actually reading the .mh_sequences
> > >    file to mark the new messages.  So it seems as if mutt is able to
> > >    read the file, but not to get the correct timestamp.  That seems
> > >    very weird to me.
> >
> > Peter,
> >
> > This one is most likely an XP protection issue.  IIRC, the timestamp is
> > not stored in the file itself, but in a directory containing that file.
> > Therefore, you'll need to allow the same read access to the directory
> > containing the .mh_sequences file that you allow for the file itself.
>
> I have set the entire tree, folders and files, to essentially
> unlimited access to the owner, at least as far as I can tell.  Yet
> mutt is *still* not picking up on the folders containing new mail.
> I've started using a second bash shell window in which I run:
>
> find ~/Mail -name .mh_sequences -a -exec egrep -li "unseen" {} \;
>
> but that's really a pain.  Mutt could work so nicely if I can solve
> this.

Peter,

Are you sure the owner is who you think it is?  Do you have 'ntsec' on?
Are your /etc/passwd and /etc/group files up to date (if you've upgraded
your systems, most likely the user SIDs changed, so you'll need to update
the passwd and group files)?

Did you try "touch"ing the .mh_sequences files yourself?  Does mutt pick
up that change?  Did you try giving "touch" the -d or -r parameters?

If you are willing to go into mutt's source, why not find a place that
checks the timestamp and write a small test case that uses the exact same
sequence.  You could then run it in a loop and see whether it detects that
the file is touched...

Unfortunately, other than that, I'm fresh out of ideas.

> > > 2) I have some Perl scripts I run from mutt.  One of them parses a
> > >    piped in email message and records some information from the
> > >    message header.  This works fine if I am viewing the message in
> > >    mutt's pager, and pipe it to the script.  But if I tag some
> > >    messages in mutt's index, and try to pipe them all (I do have
> > >    pipe_split set to "yes"), I get "File not found" errors on the Perl
> > >    script.  This used to work on both NT and Win2000.
> >
> > Can you insert some debugging print statements into the Perl scripts
> > themselves, and see *exactly* which files they try to open (including
> > whitespace and special characters)?  This may be the line ending issue all
> > over again...  Or, it could be a shell quoting issue (if mutt passes
> > backslashes through a shell without properly escaping them)
>
> It's the Perl scripts themselves that don't get found.  Mutt seems to
> be using different code to pipe messages to these files, and one of
> them's not working.  I'm stumped.

Again, I would check the permissions on the scripts first (executable for
whatever user mutt is running under).  Other than that, I don't really
know much about mutt (I myself don't use it).

> > > I'm willing to try debugging mutt, but I'm not sure what's a
> > > reasonable way to debug a curses-based application in a Cygwin
> > > environment.  I'm open to any suggestions here.
> > >
> > > Any clues on any of this?
> >
> > Hope the above helps,
>
> Thanks, Igor.  This was helpful, but I haven't solved these problems
> yet.  Any debugging tips?  I've been able to build mutt 1.5.4, but I
> don't know how to build a debug version, and, unlike 1.4i, it crashes
> on some messages.
>
> Thanks,
> -pd

See suggestion above (write a short test case that uses the same code, and
keep adding code from mutt to it until it stops working).  I doubt the
part of mutt that checks the mailbox timestamps has anything to do with
curses.
	Igor
-- 
				http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/
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ZZZzz /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_		igor@watson.ibm.com
     |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'		Igor Pechtchanski
    '---''(_/--'  `-'\_) fL	a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-.  Meow!

"I have since come to realize that being between your mentor and his route
to the bathroom is a major career booster."  -- Patrick Naughton


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