Subj : Re: Message Pointers
To   : Digital Man
From : Dumas Walker
Date : Mon Jul 14 2025 09:33:00

-=> Digital Man wrote to Dumas Walker <=-

 > Synchronet BBS for Linux Version 3.20a
 > Revision a Apr 27 2024 09:49 SMBLIB 3.00 GCC 12.2.0

 DM> I'd upgrade to v3.20d or later.

Noted.  I upgraded my test system to the latest yesterday to try it out.

 > For some reason your board loses me from time to time. It seems random.

 DM> User's message scan pointers are stored in data/user/<user-num>.subs,
 DM> if you want to monitor changes to the user's file, look for any
 DM> corruption, etc.

Also noted.

 DM> Also, if the user is logging on to multiple nodes or services (e.g.
 DM> web, nntp, ftp, mail, and telnet, ssh, or rlogin) concurrently, that
 DM> can cause race-conditions and user-surprises with message scan
 DM> pointers. That'd be something to keep an eye on as well.

FYI a couple of things I have determined since:

(1) per the logs, both times the user logged on yesterday morning, when
they supposedly got the bad packet and when they got the second (*) one,
Synchronet reports that it scanned 55 areas.  Based on what it says when I
download a packet, and when another user downloads one, I am pretty sure
that is the number of areas joined and it was consistent.

(2) I asked then to describe how they determined there was an issue.
Multimail has a feature where you can press "L" and rotate through a
listing of All Areas, Active Areas (the ones with messages), and Subscribed
Areas.  Not sure if this is a Multimail issue, or maybe just something with
the Synchronet packets, but he says the "Subscribed" list is where he sees
that there are message areas missing.

I told him I was not sure that the "Subscribed" feature of Multimail was
accurate.  On my packets, for example, that feature doesn't work at all.  I
trust the "55 areas" info that Synchronet is reporting in the logs over
what Multimail is reporting.

(*) in the second packet, they had managed to reset their msg pointers so
no comparison in packet size would be valid there.





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