[H-GEN] Stupid messages

[David Wood]

(Note reply-to: being general at humbug.org.au vs David Wood <dwood at plugged.net.au>)

On Wed, 17 Mar 1999, Steve Thorne wrote:
> (Note reply-to: being general at humbug.org.au vs "Steve Thorne" <sjthorne at ozemail.com.au>)
> What does it mean?
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mail System Internal Data <MAILER-DAEMON at oznet03.ozemail.com.au>
> Date: Wednesday, 17 March 1999 4:51
> Subject: DON'T DELETE THIS MESSAGE -- FOLDER INTERNAL DATA
> 
> 
> >This text is part of the internal format of your mail folder, and is not
> >a real message.  It is created automatically by the mail system software.
> >If deleted, important folder data will be lost, and it will be re-created
> >with the data reset to initial values.
> >


This is part of a mailbox format.  Certain mail user agents (MUAs) and mail
retrieval agents (MRAs, such as IMAPd and POPd) modify the standard mbox
mailbox format for their use.

This fake message is used to store mailbox state information in the headers. 
This information is used by the MUA and/or MRA to note and maintain its state. 
If this message is deleted, it will be recreated the next time the MUA or MRA
notices (that is, when it accesses the mailbox).  The recreated message will
have a blank state, since it is starting over.  If this mailbox is later
accessed by the creating entity, you may see additional headers written into it
for state keeping.

If you access this mailbox with an MUA (like pine) that expects to see the
standard mbox format, it will not know that this message is anything other than
a normal message.  This was done to avoid breaking other mailers.

In short, this is just the price that you pay for accessing a mailbox written
by Ozemail's MRA when you want to use pine.  So, just leave it - don't bother
to delete it since you are just wasting your time.

Cheers,
Dave
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