by It's often considered poor form to quote an article completely. Since
the question and the answer were separated by over a month, it just
seems right in this case.
I finally solved this problem. The hint was at
http://home.netscape.com/eng/mozilla/2.0/relnotes/demo/movemail.html
The context was near the end where "the Solaris problem" was explained.
Once I realized that Netscape mail always wanted to see the spool in
BSD mailbox format, it was painfully obvious that my MMDF spool was
antagonizing it. [ I really, really, really, didn't want to switch
away from MMDF, so don't even suggest it. ]
As obtuse as it sounds, configuring the POP3 server for localhost
seems to have solved it. /etc/popper knows about MMDF mailboxes
and hides that little bit of ugliness from Netscape.
I hope this saves someone else from suffering through this problem.
RJL
> Newsgroups: comp.unix.sco.misc
> Subject: Netscape w/ MMDF mailboxes?
> Summary: Does Navigator 3.0 munch mmdf mail folders?
> Keywords: mmdf ^A netscape navigator mailbox corrupt
> X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 #5 (NOV)
> OK. My turn to ask a question.
> Is anyone else using Netscape Navigator Mail on OpenServer 5 with MMDF
> style mailbox having problems with Navigator silently eating messages?
> I run MMDF. I thought I liked the idea of MMDF mailboxes, but after
> years of fighting various software packages in handling MMDF mailboxes,
> I'm just about to make them go away. If not for tens of megabytes of
> code and mailboxes, I would have already done this.
> When messages to into the spool, the messages are perfectly formatted.
> Since this is the machine that I personally send/rx a hundred or more
> emails a day from, I feel pretty confident that the MTA itself is fine.
> Netscape is the variable here, I believe.
> Sometimes, but not always, when my user clicks on "get new mail", old
> messages will disappear, new messages will fail to appear, or sometimes
> subjects with no text will appear.
> If I look in ~/nsmail/Inbox, the problem becomes quickly apparent. I've
> attached a slightly edited version of one of these corrupt Inboxes. For
> this post, I've expanded out ^A strings to a carat A and have replaced
> the body of the text with [ body ]. If you know what an MMDF mailbox
> looks like (each message has exactly one string of four control-As
> follwed by a carraige return both before and after each message) you
> can see that this is making a mockery of it.
> If I manually edit the mailbox and force Navigator to reread it, all
> work OK for a little while (minutes) but the mailbox quickly gets munched
> again.
> I don't see any real requirement for the ~/nsmail/INbox to be in MMDF
> format. Navigator could store them in EBCDIC for all I care. However,
> it looks like when it's configured for "Built-in movemail" it's vaguely
> cognizant of the MMDF mailboxes, but still gets tripped up.
> Shy of reconfiguring all my software to not use MMDF mailboxes (oh no!)
> does anyone have suggestions for workarounds on this? Has anyone else
> seen this problem?
> From - Sun Oct 6 22:51:34 1996
> ^A^A^A^A
> From lindaj Mon Oct 7 02:25:10 1996
> Received: from msp-mail.dgii.com by caddy.arnet.com id aa06930;
> 7 Oct 96 2:24 CDT
> Received: from gw2.dgii.com by msp-mail.dgii.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4)
> id CAA10555; Mon, 7 Oct 1996 02:24:01 -0500
> Received: from moss.verinet.com by gw2.dgii.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4)
> id CAA08535; Mon, 7 Oct 1996 02:21:02 -0500
> Date: Mon, 7 Oct 1996 01:24:46 -0600
> X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Light Version 1.5.2
> Mime-Version: 1.0
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> Subject: Being a mom with a disability
> X-Mozilla-Status: 0001
> Content-Length: 360
> [ body ]
> ^A^A^A^A
> ^A^A^A^A
> From - Tue Oct 8 22:15:46 1996
> ^A^A^A^A
> From lindaj Tue Oct 8 22:15:06 1996
> Received: from msp-mail.dgii.com by caddy.arnet.com id aa16119;
> 8 Oct 96 22:10 CDT
> Received: from gw2.dgii.com by msp-mail.dgii.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4)
> id WAA01178; Tue, 8 Oct 1996 22:10:09 -0500
> Received: from mercury.dsu.edu by gw2.dgii.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4)
> id WAA18767; Tue, 8 Oct 1996 22:07:08 -0500
> Date: Tue, 8 Oct 1996 21:52:51 -0500 (CDT)
> Precedence: bulk
> Subject: Homeschooling
> X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0 -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas
> X-Comment: Spina Bifida Discussion
> X-Mozilla-Status: 0000
> [ body ]
> ^A^A^A^A
> From - Tue Oct 8 23:18:37 1996
> ^A^A^A^A
> From lindaj Tue Oct 8 22:50:00 1996
> Received: from msp-mail.dgii.com by caddy.arnet.com id aa16239;
> 8 Oct 96 22:47 CDT
> Received: from gw2.dgii.com by msp-mail.dgii.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4)
> id WAA01297; Tue, 8 Oct 1996 22:47:30 -0500
> Received: from mercury.dsu.edu by gw2.dgii.com (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4)
> id WAA18882; Tue, 8 Oct 1996 22:44:28 -0500
> Date: Tue, 8 Oct 1996 22:31:07 -0500 (CDT)
> Precedence: bulk
> Subject: Local chapter's newsletters
> X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0 -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas
> X-Comment: Spina Bifida Discussion
> X-Mozilla-Status: 0000
> [ body ]
> ^A^A^A^A