[TriLUG] Strange Mail Problems w/Mindspring

[Brian Weaver]

Michael,

That is exactly the same behavior I'm seeing, when I use procmail. If I
use postfix then I have no problems. Personally, I think it's a timeout
issue (at least it appears to be). When I'm using postfix as the MDA
there is no serious delay. Using procmail it is about 30 to 40 seconds
between the complete download of the first message and the DELE command
being issued. I think there systems are just horked IMHO. I'm just glad
I'm dropping the account in the immediate future. I haven't used dialup
in a very long time and I just don't see me needing it anytime in the
near future since my Dad is now a RR customer. 

-Weave

Michael Hrivnak [mhrivnak at triad.rr.com] wrote on Thu, Apr 08, 2004 at 01:18:27PM -0400:
> I once had a very odd problem with my mindspring account.  I also use Mandrake 
> 9.2 with SA, razor, fetchmail, and I still go through postfix.  What happened 
> is I was getting the same spam message every few minutes, and this went on 
> for more than a day.  Eventually I discovered that fetchmail was getting 
> errors trying to delete the message presumably due to a disk error on the 
> other end, and so it would retrieve that email every time it checked for 
> email and never delete it.  I ended up just having to connect through a 
> webmail interface and delete it myself.
> 
> Good luck,
> Michael
> 
> On Thursday 08 April 2004 10:31 am, Brian Weaver wrote:
> > Howdy all,
> >
> > I've been experiencing some strange e-mail weirdness and I'm wondering
> > if anyone else might have some insight into what's going on. I've had an
> > e-mail address on mindspring for a very long time and I'm about to get
> > rid of it, mainly because of the volume of SPAM. Well I finally got off
> > my butt and installed Spam Assassin + Vipul's Razor on my Mandrake 9.2
> > server at home.
> >
> > I've been using fetchmail for years now to pull down my e-mail from the
> > mindspring account with out any problems. On my server I have Postfix
> > configured and fetchmail was using Postfix as the MDA. Postfix would of
> > course call Procmail via a .forward file, thus pre-sorting my mail
> > before I read it with my IMAP capable e-mail program of the day. While
> > setting up Spam Assassin I found out I could have fetchmail directly
> > invoke procmail for the MDA and bypass Postfix since it just invoked
> > procmail anyway. I figured I would just cut out the middle man so to
> > speak.
> >
> > After getting Vipul's Razor installed to work with SpamAssassin (gotta
> > love urpmi, yum, and the like) everything seemed OK. I was going to use
> > my mindspring account to "train" SA. What seems to be happening now is
> > that when fetchmail connects to mindspring it downloads the first
> > message, passes it off to procmail + SA + VR, and then tries to delete
> > the message on the server. During the DELE command is when the
> > connection aborts.
> >
> > I'm thinking that it might be the fact that SA + VR can take a bit to
> > complete (15 to 30 sec) and that mindspring is disconnecting me. I
> > quickly added my account to Thunderbird at another location and was able
> > to successfully pull down the mail. Has anyone else had this kind of
> > trouble with mindspring?  Here is a trace when using fetchmail:
> >
> > $ fetchmail -v -f .fetchmailrc-mindspring 2>&1  | perl -p -e '$now =
> > localtime; print "$now: ";' Thu Apr  8 10:26:15 2004: fetchmail: 6.2.4
> > querying mail.mindspring.com (protocol POP3) at Thu 08 Apr 2004 10:26:15 AM
> > EDT: poll started Thu Apr  8 10:26:15 2004: fetchmail: POP3< +OK NGPopper
> > vEL_5_7 at mindspring.com ready
> > <27934.1081434376 at franklin.mail.mindspring.net> Thu Apr  8 10:26:15 2004:
> > fetchmail: POP3> CAPA
> > Thu Apr  8 10:26:15 2004: fetchmail: POP3< +OK
> > Thu Apr  8 10:26:15 2004: fetchmail: POP3< user
> > Thu Apr  8 10:26:15 2004: fetchmail: POP3< pass
> > Thu Apr  8 10:26:15 2004: fetchmail: POP3< top
> > Thu Apr  8 10:26:15 2004: fetchmail: POP3< uidl
> > Thu Apr  8 10:26:15 2004: fetchmail: POP3< .
> > Thu Apr  8 10:26:15 2004: fetchmail: POP3> USER XXXX
> > Thu Apr  8 10:26:15 2004: fetchmail: POP3< +OK
> > Thu Apr  8 10:26:15 2004: fetchmail: POP3> PASS *
> > Thu Apr  8 10:26:16 2004: fetchmail: POP3< +OK XXXX has 2 messages (3778
> > octets). Thu Apr  8 10:26:19 2004: fetchmail: POP3> STAT
> > Thu Apr  8 10:26:19 2004: fetchmail: POP3< +OK 2 3778
> > Thu Apr  8 10:26:19 2004: fetchmail: POP3> LAST
> > Thu Apr  8 10:26:19 2004: fetchmail: POP3< +OK 0
> > Thu Apr  8 10:26:19 2004: 2 messages for XXXX at mail.mindspring.com (3778
> > octets). Thu Apr  8 10:26:19 2004: fetchmail: POP3> LIST
> > Thu Apr  8 10:26:19 2004: fetchmail: POP3< +OK
> > Thu Apr  8 10:26:19 2004: fetchmail: POP3< 1 1888
> > Thu Apr  8 10:26:19 2004: fetchmail: POP3< 2 1890
> > Thu Apr  8 10:26:19 2004: fetchmail: POP3< .
> > Thu Apr  8 10:26:19 2004: fetchmail: POP3> TOP 1 99999999
> > Thu Apr  8 10:26:19 2004: fetchmail: POP3< +OK
> > Thu Apr  8 10:26:19 2004: reading message XXXX at mail.mindspring.com:1 of 2
> > (1888 octets) Thu Apr  8 10:26:50 2004: #************** flushed
> > Thu Apr  8 10:26:50 2004: fetchmail: POP3> DELE 1
> > Thu Apr  8 10:26:50 2004: fetchmail: socket error while fetching from
> > mail.mindspring.com Thu Apr  8 10:26:50 2004: fetchmail: 6.2.4 querying
> > mail.mindspring.com (protocol POP3) at Thu 08 Apr 2004 10:26:50 AM EDT:
> > poll completed Thu Apr  8 10:26:50 2004: fetchmail: Query status=2 (SOCKET)
> > Thu Apr  8 10:26:50 2004: fetchmail: normal termination, status 2
> -- 
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