in case of reading a mail box on a nfs-mounted disk There are two problems; first there are a number of calls to string-match and the like with argument proto which is nil. This crashes Debugger entered--Lisp error: (wrong-type-argument stringp nil) string-match("^\\(imap\\|pop\\)s?$" nil nil) rmail-remote-proto-p(nil) rmail-insert-inbox-text(("/var/spool/mail/jpff" "/mnt/snout/home/jpff/mbox") t) rmail-get-new-mail-1(nil ("/var/spool/mail/jpff" "/mnt/snout/home/jpff/mbox") nil) rmail-get-new-mail(nil) funcall-interactively(rmail-get-new-mail nil) call-interactively(rmail-get-new-mail nil nil) command-execute(rmail-get-new-mail) The patch below improves things --- a/lisp/mail/rmail.el +++ b/lisp/mail/rmail.el @@ -1902,7 +1902,7 @@ rmail-parse-url (host (substring file (or (match-end 2) (+ 3 (match-end 1)))))) - (if (rmail-remote-proto-p proto) + (if (and proto (rmail-remote-proto-p proto)) (if (not pass) (when rmail-remote-password-required (setq got-password (not (rmail-have-password))) @@ -1913,7 +1913,7 @@ rmail-parse-url ;; does not really like it, in spite of the movemail spec. (setq file (concat proto "://" user "@" host)))) - (if (rmail-movemail-variant-p 'emacs) + (if (and proto (rmail-movemail-variant-p 'emacs)) (if (string-equal proto "pop") (list (concat "po:" user ":" host) proto @@ -2072,7 +2072,7 @@ rmail-insert-inbox-text ;; If we just read the password, most likely it is ;; wrong. Otherwise, see if there is a specific ;; reason to think that the problem is a wrong passwd. - (if (and (rmail-remote-proto-p proto) + (if (and proto (rmail-remote-proto-p proto) (or got-password (re-search-forward rmail-remote-password-error nil t))) but still fails. It reports it is reading the mailbox and there is a long delay before it returns with a blank buffer looking at RMAIL file and not reading the mail In GNU Emacs 27.0.50 (build 77, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.24.32) of 2019-01-29 built on xenakis Repository revision: 7a10db87a1ff9a36ff09fcda15cd32f3e719e1b3 Repository branch: master Windowing system distributor 'The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.11906000 System Description: openSUSE Leap 15.0 Recent messages: File RMAIL is large (86.8M), really open? (y)es or (n)o or (l)iterally y Loading dired-add...done Counting messages...done Getting mail from /mnt/snout/home/jpff/mbox... movemail: No locks available for /mnt/snout/home/jpff/mbox (No new mail has arrived) 0 new messages read You can run the command ‘rmail-get-new-mail’ with g 0 new messages read Making completion list... Configured using: 'configure --without-gnutls' Configured features: XPM JPEG TIFF GIF PNG SOUND GSETTINGS GLIB NOTIFY INOTIFY LIBXML2 FREETYPE XFT ZLIB TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS GTK2 X11 XDBE XIM THREADS CANNOT_DUMP GMP Important settings: value of $LC_CTYPE: en_US.UTF-8 value of $LANG: en_US.UTF-8 value of $XMODIFIERS: @im=local locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix Major mode: RMAIL Minor modes in effect: auto-image-file-mode: t show-paren-mode: t display-time-mode: t tooltip-mode: t global-eldoc-mode: t electric-indent-mode: t mouse-wheel-mode: t menu-bar-mode: t file-name-shadow-mode: t global-font-lock-mode: t font-lock-mode: t auto-composition-mode: t auto-encryption-mode: t auto-compression-mode: t buffer-read-only: t line-number-mode: t transient-mark-mode: t Load-path shadows: None found. Features: (shadow emacsbug mime-compose mail-alias-menu url-util url-parse auth-source cl-seq eieio eieio-core cl-macs eieio-loaddefs json map url-vars shr-color color shr text-property-search svg xml dom browse-url qp rmailmm message rmc puny seq byte-opt gv bytecomp byte-compile cconv dired dired-loaddefs format-spec rfc822 mml mml-sec password-cache epa derived epg epg-config gnus-util time-date mm-decode mm-bodies mm-encode gmm-utils mailheader cl-loaddefs cl-lib mail-parse rfc2231 rmail rmail-loaddefs mailabbrev flyspell mailalias mailcrypt mail-extr comint ansi-color ring ispell sendmail rfc2047 rfc2045 ietf-drums mm-util mail-prsvr mail-utils find-file misearch multi-isearch elec-pair cal-julian delsel cus-start cus-load image-file crypt crypt++ crypt+pgp-pub paren view cal-china cal-bahai cal-islam cal-hebrew lunar solar cal-dst appt diary-lib diary-loaddefs holidays hol-loaddefs cal-menu easymenu calendar cal-loaddefs time mule-util tooltip eldoc electric uniquify ediff-hook vc-hooks lisp-float-type mwheel term/x-win x-win term/common-win x-dnd tool-bar dnd fontset image regexp-opt fringe tabulated-list replace newcomment text-mode elisp-mode lisp-mode prog-mode register page menu-bar rfn-eshadow isearch timer select scroll-bar mouse jit-lock font-lock syntax facemenu font-core term/tty-colors frame cl-generic cham georgian utf-8-lang misc-lang vietnamese tibetan thai tai-viet lao korean japanese eucjp-ms cp51932 hebrew greek romanian slovak czech european ethiopic indian cyrillic chinese composite charscript charprop case-table epa-hook jka-cmpr-hook help simple abbrev obarray minibuffer cl-preloaded nadvice loaddefs button faces cus-face macroexp files text-properties overlay sha1 md5 base64 format env code-pages mule custom widget hashtable-print-readable backquote threads inotify dynamic-setting system-font-setting font-render-setting move-toolbar gtk x-toolkit x multi-tty make-network-process emacs) Memory information: ((conses 16 117963 9850) (symbols 48 10775 1) (strings 32 31121 1305) (string-bytes 1 1014103) (vectors 16 34578) (vector-slots 8 400927 23720) (floats 8 737 382) (intervals 56 841 0) (buffers 992 17)) ==John ffitch