Hello,

while chewmail has ridiculous memory requirements, and tends to trash my
laptop down to the need of a power cycle, it still has features that I
cannot found in other mail archivers, so I'm stuck with using it.

Here is another flaw that I found.  I had a big mailbox file with some
debian-private archives, and I ran:

  chewmail --days=0 --output-box=debian-private-%Y debian-private

I didn't pay attention to the size of the debian-private mailbox, so
chewmail thrashed my laptop to death.  After rebooting this is what I
found:

$ ls -la debian-private*
-rw-r--r-- 1 enrico enrico       0 2009-01-18 19:24 debian-private-2001
-rw------- 1 enrico enrico       0 2009-01-18 19:24 debian-private-2001.lock
-rw-r--r-- 1 enrico enrico       0 2009-01-18 19:24 debian-private-2002
-rw------- 1 enrico enrico       0 2009-01-18 19:24 debian-private-2002.lock
-rw-r--r-- 1 enrico enrico       0 2009-01-18 19:25 debian-private-2003
-rw------- 1 enrico enrico       0 2009-01-18 19:25 debian-private-2003.lock
-rw-r--r-- 1 enrico enrico 5918720 2009-01-18 19:25 debian-private-2003.tmp
-rw-r--r-- 1 enrico enrico       0 2009-01-18 19:25 debian-private-2004
-rw------- 1 enrico enrico       0 2009-01-18 19:25 debian-private-2004.lock
-rw-r--r-- 1 enrico enrico       0 2009-01-18 19:25 debian-private-2005
-rw------- 1 enrico enrico       0 2009-01-18 19:25 debian-private-2005.lock
-rw-r--r-- 1 enrico enrico       0 2009-01-18 19:25 debian-private-2006
-rw------- 1 enrico enrico       0 2009-01-18 19:25 debian-private-2006.lock
-rw-r--r-- 1 enrico enrico  152059 2009-01-18 19:25 debian-private-2007
-rw-r--r-- 1 enrico enrico       0 2009-01-18 19:25 debian-private-2008
-rw------- 1 enrico enrico       0 2009-01-18 19:25 debian-private-2008.lock

Yes, the original debian-private mailbox is gone, and the mails that it
contained have not been written out yet.  Hooray!  The mailbox is lost.
Luckily, this one did not contain private mail.


Ciao,

Enrico

Hi,

since this bug report describes the package "causes data loss" I set the
severity of this bug to grave.  We should not deliver software which
might cause data loss in our stable releases (thus the bug should be
RC).

I've also forwarded the problem upstream.  I do not assume that chewmail
is actively developed any more but maybe we are lucky ... or at least
other users will become aware of the issue.

Kind regards
    Andreas.

PS: Your package was highlighted in the Bug of the Day[1] initiative, which
aims to introduce newcomers to manageable tasks and guide them through
the workflow to solve them. The focus of this initiative is on migrating
packages to Salsa, as it's a great way to familiarize newcomers with a
consistent Git-based workflow.

[1] https://salsa.debian.org/tille/tiny_qa_tools/-/wikis/Tiny-QA-tasks

Hi Eric,

thanks a lot for fixing this bug upstream[1].

I would volunteer to move the package to Salsa in the debian/ team and
upload the fix as team upload in case this might help you.  Please let
me know what you think.

In case it might have slipped your attention there are some more open
bugs for chewmail in BTS[2].  If it helps I can open according issues
in Github.

Kind regards and thank you for your quick response in Github
    Andreas.

[1] https://github.com/zedinosaur/chewmail/commit/f9711c9366e21a77446042c70f329f5ec4314888
[2] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?src=chewmail

We believe that the bug you reported is fixed in the latest version of
chewmail, which is due to be installed in the Debian FTP archive.

A summary of the changes between this version and the previous one is
attached.

Thank you for reporting the bug, which will now be closed.  If you
have further comments please address them to 512231@bugs.debian.org,
and the maintainer will reopen the bug report if appropriate.

Debian distribution maintenance software
pp.
Eric Dorland <eric@debian.org> (supplier of updated chewmail package)

(This message was generated automatically at their request; if you
believe that there is a problem with it please contact the archive
administrators by mailing ftpmaster@ftp-master.debian.org)
Format: 1.8
Date: Sun, 02 Mar 2025 21:01:13 -0500
Source: chewmail
Architecture: source
Version: 1.4-1
Distribution: unstable
Urgency: medium
Maintainer: Eric Dorland <eric@debian.org>
Changed-By: Eric Dorland <eric@debian.org>
Closes: 512231
Changes:
 chewmail (1.4-1) unstable; urgency=medium
 .
   * New upstream release (Closes: 512231)
   * Add gbp.conf
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 67e50d4942f331f7e50e5362aecc1afdd7825878 1956 chewmail_1.4-1.debian.tar.xz
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