Procmail Maildir messages disappearing

June 26, 2007 [Tech]

Google-friendly title, no?

Executive summary:

In your ~/.procmailrc

MAILDIR=$HOME/Maildir - is BAD, whereas

MAILDIR=$HOME/Maildir/ - is good.

The slash at the end appears to tell procmail that this is a Maildir directory, rather than something else, elusive.

For a week my messages were appearing in $HOME/Maildir, but they were just in there with names like msg.zFS, instead of going into $HOME/Maildir/new and having a name like 1282544959.Q22432E173.192.0.54.2:1,T.

This meant they effectively disappeared, and I had a quiet, relaxing week.

Followed by a panicked and expletive-filled hour or so.

When I put the slash back, new messages started appearing in my Inbox again.

I was also able just to move the msg.zFS files into "new", and they appeared fine, which was nice.