Corrupted Folder.BAG files in PMMail 2000 (Windows)

[Michael Baum]

On Tue, 11 Jan 2000 14:41:15 -0500, Jimmy McCorquodale wrote:

>I had this happen here to once with a DOC file as an attachment also.  It multiplied into 3 copies.
>
>I thought of it as a one time fluke, but since someone else had it, I guess I am wrong...  We will 
>look into it.
>
>
>To fix it, I moved one copy of the offending message to another folder and deleted the rest of the 
>duplicates, re-indexed it, and then brought the one copy back.   I haven't had it happen again since 
>then (about a month).


No, Jimmy, that's only a temporary solution. As long as the message remains in the folder and indexed in the bag file, by-me-by as a result of one process or another PMMail 2000 will try to refresh the listing and create a new bogus entry. Left to its own devices over a few days it will keep creating new erroneous records.

This seems to be a new feature with PMMail 2000, and I'm against it. Seriously, I think this is a pretty bad bug.

Now let's see. The format of the bag records is something like:
Read flag
Enclosure flag
Date
Time 
Subject
To email first line
To real name first line
From email
From real name
Msg size abrv.
Msg file name
Attachment Mime Type/Name
Msg size
??
You use x\de as a field separator and x\e1 for null values?

The problem is in that Attachment field. Here's a typical example, a message that was produced by Eudora Pro Version 4.1, attaching an MSWord document. As encoded by Eudora, the attachment part is labelled:

--=====================_1082331==_
Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name="HTMed Questions.doc";
 x-mac-type="42494E41"; x-mac-creator="4D535744"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="HTMed Questions.doc"



Here's the Attachment field from the bag file. Note the CRFL inserted after the double quote mark at the end of the first line. I don't think that's supposed to be there and I think it's part of the problem. The balance of the record continues on the next line of the file.

====================_1082331==_"
APPLICATION+OCTET-STREAM*HTMed Questions.doc=3,4347;APPLICATION+OCTET-STREAM*HTMed Questions.doc=3,4347;



I just closed and restarted PMMail. Now my folder shows _four_ entries for this message, and the bag file has two indentical corrupted records. You see?

Michael

================================================================
MAABaum <michael.baum@nist.gov>