stewart_sys@UTA.CSNET (Dan Stewart) (03/03/86)
I have had a frequent problem with users on my system receiving a MAIL
notification when they log in, but having no newmail when they enter
the MAIL Utility. Evidently, the Newmail field in SYSUAF.DAT is not
in sync with their actual mail count. I've tried a few different things
to straighten this out, and have not been successful. Does anyone know
of an easy solution without having to actually modify the SYSUAF field??
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
-Dan Stewart
STEWART_SYS@UTA.CSNETart%mwvms@MITRE.ARPA (03/05/86)
-------- >I have had a frequent problem with users on my system receiving a MAIL >notification when they log in, but having no newmail when they enter >the MAIL Utility. Evidently, the Newmail field in SYSUAF.DAT is not >in sync with their actual mail count. I've tried a few different things >to straighten this out, and have not been successful. Does anyone know >of an easy solution without having to actually modify the SYSUAF field?? >Any suggestions would be appreciated. Their exists several possiblities as to how the user managed to get the counter in the SYSUAF out of sync. PS it is possible to likewise get the counter out of sysnc the other way so that the user will have mail but not be notified of its existence. The simplest way to get the counter back in sync follows: $ MAIL MAIL>SELECT/NEW no new mail MAIL>EXIT $.. At this point the mail pointers should be back in sync. Other commands which will get the mail pointers back in sync are PURGE/RECLAIM and COMPRESS. The basic methods used to get the MAIL counts out of sync are: 1)system crashes while in MAIL 2)deletion of mail files outside of mail 3)multiple accounts pointing at the same directory and mail files 4)control Y aborts of mail. Art McClinton Mitre
MHJohnson@HI-MULTICS.ARPA (Mark Johnson) (03/05/86)
To straighten it out, have the user do a READ/NEW while in MAIL. This should give you an error message but also resets the counter in the SYSUAF. You could of course bash SYSUAF yourself, it is an ISAM file with defined fields.... --Mark <MHJohnson @ HI-MULTICS.ARPA>
aven@UMDHEP.BITNET (03/06/86)
There is a command procedure in SYS$EXAMPLES: (I forget the name, but there are only a few .COMs there, anyway) that will allow you to set the NEWMAIL field in SYS$SYSTEM:VMSMAIL.DAT straight. Note that VMS moved this counter from SYSUAF to VMSMAIL under the change to version 4.x, and of course the developers did not provide a neat way to correct this problem! I SPR'd the problem, as I'm sure many others did as well, but they feel that issuing the command READ/NEW 'as many times as it takes' in the MAIL utility is an adequate solution. I sure as hell don't. It took me all of a day to write a FORTRAN program to count the number of messages in folder NEWMAIL in the users MAIL file, and they can't/won't do it despite numerous SPRs. The count gets screwed up for various reasons, such as users deleting their mail file or perhaps the system crashing at a bad time (as if there were good times!). Keep sending in SPR's and maybe the developers at DEC will finally add a simple piece of code to correct the count (probably put it in AUTHORIZE) so that users won't go nuts with phantom messages. Todd Aven Softwear Sweatshop Systems Engineering, Inc.