[pmmail-list] PMMAIL 2.20.2380 file corruption (forwards with attachments)

[Lueko Willms]

On Wed, 19 Sep 2001 21:21:49 -0400, John Swartzentruber wrote:

> On Wed, 19 Sep 2001 23:15:47 +0200 (MES), Lueko Willms wrote:
> 
> >  Introducing arbitrary filenames forces the mail program to maintain
> >a link between the message and the detached attachment's file name,
> >so that it can be found again and re-converted back to the file name
> >given in the MIME header.
> 
> Why is a connection necessary?

  Because the mail program has to know wich detached file belongs to
which message, so that it can delete it all in one swoop when the
user wants to delete the message together with all its attachments. 


> >  Yes, it is a very very very bad idea, to put all the attachments of
> >thousands of messages into one single directory and break your head
> >with all the problems of getting the names unique across these
> >thousands of messages. 
> 
> I frankly can't imagine anyone with thousands of attachments all open
> at the same time. 

   Go back in this thread and read about the problems of that guy who
has maybe not thousands, but quite a number of messages which all
have an attachment named "LICENCE.KEY" which get confused because
they are all stored in one directory and PMMail loses track of which
file belongs to which message. The customers do not get their own
licence key, but the one intended for another customer. 

> The temporary files would be created only when the
> attachment is opened, not when the message itself is received or
> opened.

   OK, but how can PMMail know for how long e.g. PMView has an
attached image file open? No way. 

   The only safe way to deal with these problems is to create a
subdirectory next to the message file and best with the same base
file name and the extension ATT instead of MSG. Makes it easy to
recover after an desaster, not only for PMMail, but also for a human
user looking thru the directories. 

Yours, 
Lüko Willms 
Frankfurt/Main 
/ Lueko.Willms@T-Online.de