Re: [nmh-workers] inc only incorporates one email from spool

[Robert Elz]

    Date:        Wed, 11 Apr 2018 12:52:24 +0100
    From:        address@hidden
    Message-ID:  <address@hidden>

  | I'm on mac osx, downloading IMAP email using fetchmail + procmail.
  | Procmail is writing to a spool file like so:
  |
  | :0
  | ${HOME}/mail/spool
  |
  | When I incorporate mail with
  | inc +inbox -file ~/mail/spool

I use procmail to put my mail into MH folders directly, rather
that that two step of putting it in a file, and then doing inc on
the file.

That is, either by having procmail simply write the message in the
MH folder, like ...

:0 :
* ^To:.*\<(owner-big-internet|Big-I-Bounces)address@hidden
spam/.  

Or by using MH;s rcvstore, like ...

:0 : nmh.lock
* ^Return-Path: *<address@hidden>
| rcvstore +info/nmh

The former when I don't want unsequence sequence updates,
the latter when I do (I don't care what spam I have, or have not,
seen, but I do care about nmh list mail).

  | I only get the oldest (first at the top of the spool file) email 
  | incorporated into my inbox.

Are you sure you're not getting all of them, incorporated as
a single message?

As I recall (have not done this for a very long time) procmail
deletes the 'From ' lines from messages (or perhaps fetchmail
deletes them) and without those, inc cannot tell where one
message ends and the next starts.

That's what I would guess is probably the underlying cause of
your problems.

But it is easier to just avoid the "one big file" and "inc" and the
problem should just go away (but you do need to be careful with
locking to avoid having procmail, and nmh, or even procmail twice
in parallel, attempting to change things at the same time.)

I handle that (mostly) by running the procmail (and the thing
I use instead of fetchmail) step manually (well, semi-manually)
and I simply avoid doing any nmh operations while it runs.

kre