I am experiencing a bit of problem, one which I don't understand?
Been set up with Virtualmin now for just under a week and before I moved over from 2003 I tested everything and it worked fine.
Now I am using it as a live system, I realised I wasn't getting as many mails as I normally get. I've checked out the spam settings amongst other things but I have just found that on one of the folders I created in my imap mailbox, there are a load of files being listed in there. They have random names too such as msg.CT3G and msg.NP2G, msg8J2G, msg.mR3G.
I've opened each one of these in WinSCP and they are the emails I have been missing? I have no idea why they are ending up in my FreeCycle folder? I've set up mail filtering in Virtualmin but surely this wouldn't forward every email to this particular folder?
Please help I get a large amount of emails, most of which require my immediate attention and I can only read them via SCP at the moment - unable to reply!
Thanks in advance. Liam
Hi Liam,
I have a guess as to what's going on.
There's a bug in Usermin now, where email filters created for a mailbox copied over for another system don't work correctly out of the box. This bug is fixed in the next version of Usermin!
I'm guessing what you're seeing, is that you have a mail folder in a directory like this:
/home/USERNAME/Maildir/.FreeCycle
And within that .FreeCycle directory, you have two folders, "new" and "cur", but within .FreeCycle itself are also those odd msg.xxx files.
Does that sound about right?
If so, here's how you can fix that for the time being:
1. Edit the .procmailrc file in your home directory, and anywhere it lists a folder name, such as this:
$HOME/Maildir/.FreeCycle
Add a slash to the end of it, so that it looks like this:
$HOME/Maildir/.FreeCycle/
That will make sure all new mails end up in the correct directory -- without the trailing slash, they show up as those odd msg.xxx files you're seeing now.
You'll have to do this anytime you add a new procmail rule until the next Usermin version comes out.
2. Move the msg.xxx files into the "new" folder so that your email client can see them.
To do that, go into the directory containing those msg.xxx files, and assuming there's a "new" folder underneath that, you can do this:
mv msg* new
And at that point, they should be visible from within your email client.
-Eric
Hi Eric, thank you for coming to the rescue once again!
Just used WinSCP to browse to my users mail directory, and then into the correct folder. You were spot on about moving the msg.* files into the "new" directory, they appeared instantly in my mail client (Thunderbird).
I did originally set up a Free Cycle filter, to drop new mails coming from Free cycle into the respective folder but I have since deleted this as it didn't appear to work properly - nothing was being filtered.
The msg.* files aren't just free cycle mails, they are mails from completely different domains, such as my friends and relatives, Ebay, some of the forums I visit and different mailing lists. If it was Free cycle emails I could understand it?!
I have since removed the filter, and also the mails to the "new folder" so I will keep my eye on it in case it happens again - or will it? I checked the .procmailrc file and it was empty - nothing in there at all?
Will this problem keep re-occurring now I have removed the filter? Only time will tell I suppose unless somebody knows any different?
Liam
Hey no problem. And if you ever post an issue here, and you just aren't getting the issue resolved -- one of the advantages of the paid version is that you can submit issues and feature requests via the "Bugs and Issues" link at the bottom of the page.
If you removed all the filters that you created, then yeah, the .procmailrc would likely be empty (there's a system procmailrc that's still being used for things like spam though).
This problem should not occur any longer, since you removed the filter.
As soon as the next Usermin version comes out, the problem should be resolved, and you should be able to get those filters working!
As for why you were seeing mails in addition to the Free Cycle ones? I'm not sure, I guess when you're ready to try all that again, we can look at the exact filter rules you're setting up and figure that out.
Have a good one!
-Eric
I'll keep the Bug and Issues section in mind, thanks for that.
I checked the relevant folder just a short time ago and there are no other rogue msg files appearing... and I'm receiving as many emails in my inbox now as I normally do.... well no that's a lie... as I'm not getting all the spammage, a definite improvement!
I'll wait for the Usermin update before I attempt setting filters :)