Developer Forum

I am a user of command line Mutt, so I don't have source. I have been
using Mutt 1.5.6i on Unix for years now, and all of a sudden I am
receiving a return code of -11. In the past 6 days I have received it
3 times. I rerun the line command with the same information and it
works fine.

Anyone have any idea what that error code means or what could be the
cause?

Thanks in advance,
Chris

XXXX@XXXXX.COM writes:

$ perror 11
OS error code 11: Resource temporarily unavailable


Is your home directory NFS mounted by chance?

scott

At the time mutt ran the file system was mounted. I think the error
code you are referring to is "11" from the OS. I was looking for -11
from mutt. Feel free to correct me if i am wrong.
Chris

XXXX@XXXXX.COM writes:


Few applications generate their own error codes; they usually pass
through the OS codes, sometime negating them to differentiate them from
a positive success value.

Can't speak specifically for mutt, but it is likely that EAGAIN is the
culprit.

It would have been useful if you had included the exact message that
was displayed, and the sequence of operations you used to create
the error situation.

A quick perusal of the source shows no mutt specific error 11 in
the header files, but without the exact error message, one is poking
in the dark.

I'd recommend you run it with strace or truss if you can reproduce
the error, and see if a system call is returning EAGAIN.

scott

Thanks for the insight. I have gone a week without the error and it
happened again today. Unfortunately it isn't recreateable on demand.
Again I ran from the step that failed and mutt worked. Could it be
related to the fact that I am trying to attach a 4+ meg file?

The way I execute mutt is by wrapping it in Java, unfortunately, I
only trap a return code, I don't get an error message.

Problem happened again yesterday. This time it was worse. I was
taking a core dump. But that did help, since now the problem was
recreatable. After some looking around, looked like /var fs was
full. I freed up some space and mutt worked.

Does mutt specifically reference /var, or is it e-mail throwing a
problem back to mutt?

XXXX@XXXXX.COM writes:

Mutt likely generates temporary files using one of the libc
temporary file functions. Most of them will use the TMPDIR
environment variable to determine the appropriate directory
for tempfiles and will use either /var/tmp or /tmp if TMPDIR
is unset.

Note also that /var/mail is the primary directory accessed
by mutt (or /var/spool/mail depending on host OS) since that
is where your mailbox is kept. Since mutt tracks read vs. unread
using envelope headers, it does rewrite the mailbox periodically.

scott