RMAIL and movemail?

RMAIL and movemail?

[John]

I am running the latest emacs from master but I am not sure when this
started to happen.

My raw mail box lives on a mail server machine on the LAN and i read
email either directly there (with alpine usually) or from time to time
I read mail into RMAIL on emacs on this computer.  For some time I
have not read it into emacs but now it does not work, nor for the
other main emacs user.  It may have been  triggered by a replacement
of the mail server (due to a failing disk possible) as the other user
noticed this yesterday.

Running emacs and looking at RMAIL file I type g, and it fails

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(("/snout/home/aff/mbox") t)
  rmail-get-new-mail-1(nil ("/snout/home/aff/mbox") nil)
  rmail-get-new-mail()
  rmail()
  myrmail()
  funcall-interactively(myrmail)
  call-interactively(myrmail nil nil)
  command-execute(myrmail)
  command-line-1(("-f" "myrmail"))
  command-line()
  normal-top-level()

Absolutely repeatable.  The variable proto is nil and the mail box is
set by 
(setq rmail-primary-inbox-list '("/snout/home/aff/mbox"))
where /snout if nfs mounted from the server to the local machine
This was working until yesterday.  What have I done wrong?  I have
tried tracing the rail-get-new-mail and it looks OK as far as it goes.

Another data point, ^U g works but clearly does not delete the primary
mail.   I have checks the computer has read/write access to the nfs
mounted disk.  

==John ffitch

Re: RMAIL and movemail?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2019 15:16:09 +0000
> From: John <jpff@codemist.co.uk>
> 
> I am running the latest emacs from master but I am not sure when this
> started to happen.
> 
> My raw mail box lives on a mail server machine on the LAN and i read
> email either directly there (with alpine usually) or from time to time
> I read mail into RMAIL on emacs on this computer.  For some time I
> have not read it into emacs but now it does not work, nor for the
> other main emacs user.  It may have been  triggered by a replacement
> of the mail server (due to a failing disk possible) as the other user
> noticed this yesterday.
> 
> Running emacs and looking at RMAIL file I type g, and it fails
> 
> 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(("/snout/home/aff/mbox") t)
>   rmail-get-new-mail-1(nil ("/snout/home/aff/mbox") nil)
>   rmail-get-new-mail()
>   rmail()
>   myrmail()
>   funcall-interactively(myrmail)
>   call-interactively(myrmail nil nil)
>   command-execute(myrmail)
>   command-line-1(("-f" "myrmail"))
>   command-line()
>   normal-top-level()

Can you try the emacs-26 branch and see if this problem happens there
as well?

Thanks.

Re: RMAIL and movemail?

[john]

Buid emacs-26 wit no real change.  Ran on my machine and got

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 file /mnt/snout/home/jpff/mbox is my mail file mounted via NFS. 
The/var/spool/mail/jpff file is local and not used except when the mailer 
breaks ie never

Best thought I have is soething to do with the nfs on the new server 
(Debian stretch).  I did try reading mail from a local file and that 
worked.

==John ffitch

On Wed, 23 Jan 2019, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

>> Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2019 15:16:09 +0000
>> From: John <jpff@codemist.co.uk>
>>
>> I am running the latest emacs from master but I am not sure when this
>> started to happen.
>>
>> My raw mail box lives on a mail server machine on the LAN and i read
>> email either directly there (with alpine usually) or from time to time
>> I read mail into RMAIL on emacs on this computer.  For some time I
>> have not read it into emacs but now it does not work, nor for the
>> other main emacs user.  It may have been  triggered by a replacement
>> of the mail server (due to a failing disk possible) as the other user
>> noticed this yesterday.
>>
>> Running emacs and looking at RMAIL file I type g, and it fails
>>
>> 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(("/snout/home/aff/mbox") t)
>>   rmail-get-new-mail-1(nil ("/snout/home/aff/mbox") nil)
>>   rmail-get-new-mail()
>>   rmail()
>>   myrmail()
>>   funcall-interactively(myrmail)
>>   call-interactively(myrmail nil nil)
>>   command-execute(myrmail)
>>   command-line-1(("-f" "myrmail"))
>>   command-line()
>>   normal-top-level()
>
> Can you try the emacs-26 branch and see if this problem happens there
> as well?
>
> Thanks.
>

Re: RMAIL and movemail?

[John]

Has anyone any idea why when I try to read my mbox from an NFS-mounted
filing system if fails with
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)

This has been working for years but stopped recently.  It could be to
do with a change in NFS but I have not identified an issue.   It works
from a local file and apparently using C-U g but clearly does not
remove the incoming mail from the mbox.
I tried stepping through the rmail-get-new-mail but did not see where it
stopped working

==John ffitch