Eudora: Y-32K :-)

On Jan 3, 2007, at 6:00 AM, R.A. Hettinga wrote:

> Word to the wise, though. Way back in the cave-days in Shampoo-Banana,
> Eudora was written with a then-unbelievably-large static array
> somewhere.
> It's not so unbelievably large now, though.

In the Eudora mailbox format which keeps the mailbox table of
contents in the mailbox file's resource fork, the limit is inherent
in the resource fork format (it has been a while since I cared about
the details , but there is a table of offsets to the start of each
resource from a point in the fork. Those offsets have to "jump over"
a table of resource types in the file, so the actual limit depends on
the number of resource types present in the file. As one of a famous
series of Apple tech notes said, "the resource fork is not a database".

(I became interested when I had trouble with a copied file verifier I
was playing with. There turns out to be an area in the first 128
bytes of the resource fork whose contents are arbitrary--left over
from what happened to be in part of RAM. It took me a while to work
out where and how big that was.)

There is an alternative mailbox format, which can be selected in the
Miscellaneous pane of Eudora settings. Fifth checkbox down: "Use
old-style ".toc" files. I don't know whether selecting that just
before your disaster would have helped.


[I don't think it changes the limit, since I don't use resource fork TOCs, and I hit the limit on incoming boxes every so often (spam and Take Control receipt folders). With incoming folders, Eudora yells at you but doesn't blow out the mailbox, at least as long as it can leave the messages in the In box after the transfer filter fails. But I've never hit the limit on the Out box. -Adam]


But yes, your warning--reminder--is a Good Thing™.

   --John

For what it's worth, I have hit the limit before without incident.
(Though, perhaps, I should not admit that -- anyone who hits a 32K
message limit probably should be in a 12-step program for
email-aholics!)

>For what it's worth, I have hit the limit before without incident.
>(Though, perhaps, I should not admit that -- anyone who hits a 32K
>message limit probably should be in a 12-step program for
>email-aholics!)

Received Email

     971 messages this month
   8,440 messages last month
   6,158 average per month
342,540 messages total

--
Chuck Goolsbee V.P. Technical Operations
_________________________________________________________________
digital.forest Phone: +1-877-720-0483, x2001
where Internet solutions grow Int'l: +1-206-838-1630
*** celebrating twelve years of service 7/12/1994 - 7/12/2006 ***
12101 Tukwila International Blvd Fax: +1-206-838-3749
Suite 410 http://www.forest.net
Seattle, WA 98168 email: cgforest.net

Is there such a limit in Mail? I am up to 30,000 messages. I am not
an email-aholic, but do have trouble throwing out things I might need
someday...

........................................................................
Lawrence Kirkendall +47 55 58 23 42 office
Assoc. Professor, Biology +47 99 60 33 45 cell phone/home
Univ. Bergen, Allegaten 41 +47 55 58 96 81 fax
N-5007, Bergen, Norway

http://www.bio.uib.no/code/staff/forsker.php?pid=1322&lang=N

I have just had a call from a friend who seems to be having the same
problem (mailbox disappearing) with Mac Mail (v1.7, OSX10.3x). I was
wondering if anyone knows of a size limit for Mail mailboxes, and
also where the attachments are stored for Mail1.7. Will things
improve if he upgrades to OSX 10.4/ Mail 2.x?

I suggested that he go to his second computer (which basically
mirrors his main workstation) and back up the 'user/library/mail'
folder, which he has done. he said it was only 1.7 gigs for the whole
folder, which does not seem very large to me - he does handle lots of
large attachments, so I'm assuming they are stored somewhere else.

I'll be going over to try to sort this out in a couple of days, and
I'd appreciate any help I can get...

Roger Henriques
rdh at rhen dot com

At 5:36 AM -0800 2007/01/04, johnbaxterlistsmac.com wrote:

>There is an alternative mailbox format, which can be selected in the
>Miscellaneous pane of Eudora settings. Fifth checkbox down: "Use
>old-style ".toc" files. I don't know whether selecting that just
>before your disaster would have helped.

        Note that old-style is resource forks. New-style is separate
.toc files, but performance is inferior.

--
Chris Pepper: <http://www.reppep.com/~pepper/>
                             <http://www.extrapepperoni.com/>
Rockefeller University: <http://www.rockefeller.edu/>

On Jan 5, 2007, at 12:43 PM, Lawrence Kirkendall wrote:

> Is there such a limit in Mail? I am up to 30,000 messages. I am not
> an email-aholic, but do have trouble throwing out things I might need
> someday...

There is, but the discussion here is *per mailbox*. Just do a little
filing and you'll be fine.

This limit is *much* less serious than early versions' (such as
1.5.x) behavior in the face of running out of memory. One friend was
embarrassed when his memory-starved early 1990s Eudora included his
entire In box in a message he sent to a mailing list. (And he worked
for a computer communications company, to make it worse, since people
thought he should know better.) One caused Eudora to run out of
memory by leaving too many messages in the In box. Fortunately, this
is just a bad memory (although we do still have customers using
Eudora 1.5.x).

   --John

>>For what it's worth, I have hit the limit before without incident.
>>(Though, perhaps, I should not admit that -- anyone who hits a 32K
>>message limit probably should be in a 12-step program for
>>email-aholics!)
>
>Received Email
>
> 971 messages this month
> 8,440 messages last month
> 6,158 average per month
>342,540 messages total

Slacker!

Received Email

   3,635 messages this month
  24,209 messages last month
  14,405 average per month
1,103,989 messages total

;-)

--
Marshall Clow Idio Software <mailto:marshallidio.com>

At 6:00 AM -0800 1/3/07, R.A. Hettinga wrote:
>So, I'd always *heard* that 32 thousand messages in a Eudora mailbox was
>the limit, but, as processor speeds, hard drive space, and my own
>negligence finally showed, the limit is real.

I've hit this limit many times over the years, on mailboxes which
archive high-traffic mailing lists. It's quite a problem when
incoming messages are being routed by an automatic filter, because an
error pops up for *each* message the filter is trying to route. I've
gotten into the habit of occasionally archiving or deleting older
messages into other mailboxes -- once or twice a year, depending on
the mailing list.

--
Andrew Laurence
atlaurenuci.edu

On Jan 8, 2007, at 11:05 AM, Chris Pepper wrote:

> At 5:36 AM -0800 2007/01/04, johnbaxterlistsmac.com wrote:
>
>> There is an alternative mailbox format, which can be selected in the
>> Miscellaneous pane of Eudora settings. Fifth checkbox down: "Use
>> old-style ".toc" files. I don't know whether selecting that just
>> before your disaster would have helped.
>
> Note that old-style is resource forks. New-style is separate
> .toc files, but performance is inferior.

I don't think so, Chris. It could be an historical accident that I
have no .toc files on my machine. (Currently, I'm not reading any
mail in Eudora*--I'm using Eudora to send a few outgoing messages in
cases where Eudora's stationery is handy, so my Outbox is growing.)
[* I got tired of Eudora magically moving messages from In box to
Trash, using IMAP. I believe the current version and at least one
prior version fixed that, but I had already switched.]

The Eudora 6.2 manual says (on page 369--in the Setting Eudora
Preferences area):

Use old-style “.toc” files [off]—If you turn this setting on, each
mailbox stores its table of
contents in a “mailbox.toc” file, instead of in its resource fork,
the latter being the default in 3.0
and later versions of Eudora. If you have upgraded to version 3.0 or
later, this is automatically
on. You should turn this off at some point so that your mailboxes
convert to using resource
forks.

I seem to be using resource forks. It's possible that the manual is
stale. (The two ".toc" mentions above plus the related Index entry
are the only three hits in Adobe Reader's search of the manual.)

   --John

I currently have 77,143 mails in one mailbox on Apple Mail. Never had any problem.

Conclusion: there is NO limit, other than maybe 2,147,483,647. But that's hard to reach.

Winfried http://fmdiff.com/fmmenulet

And for those on too many e-mail lists....

Received Email

2,205 messages this month 7,449 messages last month 8,579 average per month 572,709 messages total

Attachments received 139 attachments this month 525 attachments last month 315 average per month 21,044 total attachments

Sent Email

63 messages this month 263 messages last month 238 average per month 15,913 messages total

Note: Eudora is only counting messages it handled since June 17, 2001 which obviously doesn't count messages received during that period at work using other software.....

--Jim

At 5:40 PM -0800 2007/01/09, R.A. Hettinga wrote:
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Hash: SHA1
>
>At 12:43 PM -0800 1/5/07, chuck goolsbee wrote:
>>Received Email
>>
>> 971 messages this month
>> 8,440 messages last month
>> 6,158 average per month
>>342,540 messages total
>
>Piker. Don't make me stop the car and come back there...
>
> 3,489 messages this month
> 19,965 messages last month
> 24,967 average per month
>1,081,184 messages total
>
>Statistics start time: Wednesday, May 28, 2003, 2:29 PM
>Current time: Friday, January 5, 2007, 4:09 PM

        Wimps! It warms me cockles to beat Marshall, though.

   9,350 messages this month
  31,772 messages last month
  44,982 average per month
1,398,732 messages total

                                                Chris
--
Chris Pepper: <http://www.reppep.com/~pepper/>
                             <http://www.extrapepperoni.com/>
Rockefeller University: <http://www.rockefeller.edu/>

At 5:40 PM -0800 1/9/07, R.A. Hettinga wrote:
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Hash: SHA1
>
>At 12:43 PM -0800 1/5/07, chuck goolsbee wrote:
>>Received Email
>>
>> 971 messages this month
>> 8,440 messages last month
>> 6,158 average per month
>>342,540 messages total
>
>Piker. Don't make me stop the car and come back there...
>
> 3,489 messages this month
> 19,965 messages last month
> 24,967 average per month
>1,081,184 messages total
>
>Statistics start time: Wednesday, May 28, 2003, 2:29 PM
>Current time: Friday, January 5, 2007, 4:09 PM
>

Slackers:
  9,088 messages this month
 36,820 messages last month
 32,031 average per month
2,431,464 messages total

(45% Junk total)

And that doesn't count my work address which has been wild on the Internet since the early 1990's.

At 5:40 PM -0800 2007/01/09, John W Baxter wrote:
>On Jan 8, 2007, at 11:05 AM, Chris Pepper wrote:
>
>>At 5:36 AM -0800 2007/01/04, johnbaxterlistsmac.com wrote:
>>
>>>There is an alternative mailbox format, which can be selected in the
>>>Miscellaneous pane of Eudora settings. Fifth checkbox down: "Use
>>>old-style ".toc" files. I don't know whether selecting that just
>>>before your disaster would have helped.
>>
>> Note that old-style is resource forks. New-style is separate
>>.toc files, but performance is inferior.
>
>I don't think so, Chris. It could be an historical accident that I
>have no .toc files on my machine. (Currently, I'm not reading any
>mail in Eudora*--I'm using Eudora to send a few outgoing messages in
>cases where Eudora's stationery is handy, so my Outbox is growing.)
>[* I got tired of Eudora magically moving messages from In box to
>Trash, using IMAP. I believe the current version and at least one
>prior version fixed that, but I had already switched.]

John,

        You appear to be entirely correct, although I'm confused, as
I thought the resource fork was the 'original' store. I'm sorry for
my misinformation.


                                                Chris
--
Chris Pepper: <http://www.reppep.com/~pepper/>
                             <http://www.extrapepperoni.com/>
Rockefeller University: <http://www.rockefeller.edu/>

>Of course, the 'GhostBusters' Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man in all this is
>probably Adam...

Not in comparison with some of you folks: :-)

Received Email

   3,228 messages this month
  11,896 messages last month
  10,656 average per month
831,480 messages total


cheers... -Adam

At 2007-01-09 17:40 -0800 Marshall Clow wrote:

>Received Email
>
> 3,635 messages this month
> 24,209 messages last month
> 14,405 average per month
>1,103,989 messages total

This bandying-around of Eudora stats makes me wonder if there's a
handy stylesheet or grammar document (or whatever) available anywhere
for importing the .XML Eudora stats document into FileMaker or
anything else. I can see it's easy to pull the data out from a brief
inspection wiith TextWrangler, but I feel there may be a more elegant
method.

[thinks - maybe I should be asking this on a Eudora or FMP list ...]

regards

Rowland
--
| Wilma & Rowland Carson http://home.clara.net/rowil/
| <rowilclara.net> ... that's Rowland with a 'w' ...