Fwd: Re: Wiki advice on running getmail on INBOX access - how does that work?

c128 mail c128.mail at gmail.com
Sat Oct 18 20:20:28 UTC 2014


Thanks for trying that.

I'm running:

Ubuntu 14.04, Linux 3.4.79 #1 SMP PREEMPT Wed May 14 18:19:18 CST 2014 
armv7l armv7l armv7l GNU/Linux

incrontab 0.5.10

Just found that if I "ls" that directory, the rule is fired.  So - I 
suspect incrontab is fine.

Is this an oddity of Thunderbird access to the particular mail folder, I 
wonder, as that's my use case for testing this?

On 18/10/14 20:58, Gedalya wrote:
> On 10/18/2014 03:26 PM, c128 mail wrote:
>> Just re-tried this, and it doesn't seem to fire getmail on access for me.
>>
>> My incrontab is as follows:
>>
>> /home/user/Maildir/cur/ IN_ALL_EVENTS,IN_ONESHOT /home/user/bin/mvmail.sh
>>
>> The incrontab rule does work, but only if I make a physical change in
>> /home/user/Maildir/cur/ e.g. by moving a mail from another folder in
>> there.  Just accessing the particular inbox doesn't seem to trigger
>> anything.
>
> In my testing I get 3 events every single time I list the test
> directory, if I remove the IN_ONESHOT.
> With IN_ONESHOT, I get only one, for the first time.
> The script on the wiki ends with:
> incrontab --reload # Rearm the one-shot rule
> So that makes sense.
>
> Debian Jessie, Linux 3.16.5-1 amd64, incron 0.5.10-2
>
>>
>> On 18/10/14 19:54, c128 mail wrote:
>>> Yeah, I see what you mean - it should trigger by IN_ACCESS (from
>>> IN_ALL_EVENTS) shouldn't it.  I hadn't previously scanned over the full
>>> set of events:
>>> http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/intrepid/man5/incrontab.5.html
>>>
>>> I'll set this up again and report back one way or another.
>>>
>>> Thanks.
>>>
>>> On 18/10/14 19:50, Gedalya wrote:
>>>> On 10/18/2014 02:38 PM, c128 mail wrote:
>>>>> > What exactly did happen?
>>>>>
>>>>> Oh, yeah, didn't make that clear ;-)
>>>>>
>>>>> Nothing happened...not without coaxing.
>>>>>
>>>>> If I forced a change to the directory, then it worked - but there
>>>>> wouldn't be a change to the directory in normal operation, other than
>>>>> by mail population?
>>>> It's not supposed to require changes. Note the IN_ALL_EVENTS
>>>> definition.
>>>> This would include any attempt to open the directory and take a peek.
>>>> If you configured it according to the wiki and it's not working then we
>>>> have troubleshooting to do, but that's the theory.
>>>> I'm not familiar with incron but I've worked with Linux's inotify.
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 18/10/14 19:28, Gedalya wrote:
>>>>>> On 10/18/2014 01:24 PM, c128 mail wrote:
>>>>>>> Hi,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I'm currently running getmail in a cron job every 2 minutes, so I
>>>>>>> was
>>>>>>> quite intrigued by this on the wiki:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> http://wiki2.dovecot.org/HowTo/TriggerGetmailOnIMAPAccess
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Thing is - I couldn't see how it would work and, when I tried it, it
>>>>>>> didn't work (at least not for me).
>>>>>> What exactly did happen?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> It details using incrontab to monitor /home/username/.maildir/cur in
>>>>>>> order to trigger getmail.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> However, "cur" won't change unless populated with mail...as an
>>>>>>> initial
>>>>>>> result of actually running getmail?  Seems like a chicken and egg
>>>>>>> situation.
>>>>>> access != change
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I reckon I'm missing something fundamental :-), but what is it?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Ta.
>>>>>>
>>>>


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