Re: POP3 behavior on broken tcp connection

[Steve Dorner <[e-mail]>]

At 12:21 PM 5/26/94, John Gardiner Myers wrote:
>I was under the impression that current versions of Eudora didn't keep
>the connection open long enough to matter.  Could you clarify?

Sure.  Traveller is in Beijing, on horrendously expensive but poor quality
phone lines.  Dials into server, where he finds 50 new messages.  Eudora
begins to suck them over, DELE'ing each one after it arrives.  After 20
messages, phone goes dead.  Popper does not enter the update state, and so
neither does it do the deletions nor does it update the Status: headers.
Traveller dials again, and Eudora is presented with exactly the same
maildrop as last time.  Starts downloading all the messages again, loses
the connection after 20 messages.  Repeat until credit card limit is
reached, without fetching all mail.  :-(

If the DELE's don't happen and the LAST value isn't updated, there's no way
out of this.  Except a whole different architecture, which is what I'm
working on doing for new versions.

>Do current versions of Eudora ensure messages are written out to disk
>and will survive a crash before they send out DELE commands?

Yes.  Write it to disk, flush disk cache, read it back, DELE.

--
Steve Dorner, Qualcomm Incorporated
 "There's nothing wrong with you that can't be cured
  with a little Prozac and a polo mallet." - Woody Allen