Newsgroups: vmsnet.mail.pmdf
Subject: RE: PMDF-MR: cannot put NBS bodypart file - file does not contain
From: Bob Tinkelman <bob@camb.com>
Date: 09 Oct 1992 07:41:29 -0400 (EDT)
Organization: Cambridge Computer Associates, Inc.
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Resent-Date: 09 Oct 1992 07:41:29 -0400 (EDT)
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> > Our MR_LOCAL queue had stopped moving.  There was one file with a name
> > starting with Q and all the others started with ZZ.  I had to manually
> > hold it to get the queue moving again.
>
> This should not be happening. The file delivery was attempted on should have
> been renamed so that it no longer appears at the front of the queue. PMDF
> sorts messages and attempts delivery on messages with the fewest delivery
> attempts first.

It looks like I jumped to an incorrect conclusion when I saw
   (1) the q*.00 file,
   (2) lots of zz*.00 files,
   (3) a log file showing the MR_LOCAL channel processing the q*.00 file
       first, dying, and not processing the others, and then
   (4) all the zz*.00 files disappearing when I held the q*.00 file.

Going back now and looking at mail.log_yesterday I find records of lots of
msgs being delivered by the MR_LOCAL channel.  So I was incorrect in saying
it had ``stopped moving''.  I guess it's possible that all the zz*.00 were
very recent and that when the log file was created the q*.00 file was the
only queued file.

> Moreover, any subsequent immediate delivery jobs should not see this message
> at all no matter what its name is; it should be too old to be considered.

This would explain the fact that lots of messages moved through the queues
after the bad file appeared.

> I have no explanation other than to suggest you have seriously busted PMDF
> somehow.

I can believe that.  (I've done it before :-)  I guess I'm tempted to just
ignore this unless it reoccurs.  Unless you have any suggestions on how I
could go about debugging this?

> Someone has posted a message containing a bogus part; it is labelled as
> an NBS part but it is not. PMDF-MR has absolutely no interaction with
> any of this -- the part is purely a bag of bits.

It appears that the message containing the bogus part was constructed
by PMDF-MR at wustl:

> Received: from kids1 (kids1.wustl.edu) by DECUS.Org (PMDF #2354 ) id
>  <01GPPI9U88O090PI7I@DECUS.Org>; Thu, 8 Oct 1992 13:50:46 EDT
> Received: from mr.kids.wustl.edu by kids.wustl.edu (PMDF #2832 ) id
>  <01GPPG4NK04S91WL39@kids.wustl.edu>; Thu, 8 Oct 1992 12:49:16 CDT
> Received: with PMDF-MR; Thu, 8 Oct 1992 12:42:24 CDT
> Date: 08 Oct 1992 12:37:00 -0500 (CDT)

Is this something that an e-mail user could have caused, or are you
saying that it's a problem with their mail config?  If it's the latter,
then I'll leave it to them to follow up with you.
--
Bob Tinkelman <bob@camb.com> and <postmaster@decus.org>