A step backwards - not taken

[Kevin O'Gorman]

First the good news:  with all the success stories being told about all
sorts of variations, and even the below testimonail using the same ISP, I 
looked a little further.  To make it short, the worst problems were 
data-dependent. Somehow, 118 consecutive null bytes had crept into the 
mail spool.  When I got rid of them all the important problems went away, 
and I think this is all gonna work, staying with COL 311 and Netscape 7.

I have no idea how the null bytes got in there, and if anyone had
mentioned it to me, I might actually have opined that it couldn't happen
at all.

As for the rest, most of the criticisms of me were accurate: I have
been upset about this, short of temper and patience.  In other words a
typical customer service user's attitude aimed at a bunch of volunteers.
That was unreasonable of me.


On Wed, 11 Sep 2002, Net Llama! wrote:

> On Wed, 11 Sep 2002, Kevin O'Gorman wrote:
> > I've received quite a bit of response to this thread, which which would
> > be pleasing if any of it were of the slightest use to me.  The one thing
> > I did try was downloading Netscape 7 and trying that.  The behavior is
> > identical.
> 
> So you effectively, ignored all of the advice offered on this list, and
> then got angry with us because you still have the same problem.

Well, I didn't ignore all of it, just the parts that would have required
a full day's work.  I didn't have that luxury.

> >
> > I do agree with the one reply which indicated it looked more like an
> > application problem than a distro problem per se, so I'm not going to
> > replace the distro, I'm going to ditch it.  Many of the rest of the
> > replies seemed more intent on pushing a favorite distro than paying any
> > attention to the actual problem.
> 
> On the contrary, people suggested the distro that they have successfully
> performed the tasks that you appear unable to perfrom.  If they didn't
> have success, then they wouldn't be their favorite distro.  Or more
> succinctly, they became the favorite distro because they worked.

True as far as it goes, but I maintain it was more likely all along to
be more related to the application than the distro.  So distro change was
going to be a waste of time I didn't have.

> > To repeat:  Netscape (including 7) cannot fetch my wife's mail from
> > the ISP (Pac Bell); fetchmail can, and that gets the mail into Netscape's
> > Inbox.  But she cannot then move the mail to any of her local folders --
> > it just keeps trying forever.  She wants to go back to using netscape
> > the way she did on Windows, and it looks like the only way to do that
> > is to actually run Windows.
> 
> To repeat, this works (with PacBell, my ISP) just fine for me in Mozilla
> 1.x.  Netscape is not mozilla, and you're fierce determination to continue
> using it will result in your continued frustration while using.

The determination is not mine, but my wife's.  And she has a whim of iron;
don't even ask about her determination.

Question, though: do you retrieve from PacBell using POP?  I wonder what
else is broken for me, but I actually prefer the fetchmail method because
it's going to work better with the spam solutions I'm contemplating,
and my wife cannot tell the difference.

> Something is very badly broken on your end.  Either its your choice of
> browser, the configuration that you're using, or perhaps the entire
> distro, i don't know.  What i do know is trhat you were incredibly
> selective in what you chose to try to resolve the issue.

I don't think it was incredible, but you're entitiled to think it.  I 
prefer to think I was only considering avenues with a good likelihood
of success.  You're right about the badly broken, and the surprise is
what it turned out to be.  Fortunately I saved the mail spool that
caused the problem, and I'll send it to the Moz folks after I cleanse
it of account numbers.

> 
> >
> > I'm out of time or patience for dinking with this any more.  I'll be
> > too busy gritting my teeth and installing Windoze.  At least I know what
> > to expect.  Grrrrrrrrrr.
> 
> have fun

The best advice I got in the whole affair.  Thanks.  :o)

The other plusses: I am finally moving all my netscapes up to 7.  

Summary: apologies for my bad attitude, to all who were ruffled by it.
Thanks to all for the replies -- even though I did not take much of the
advice, the testimonials helped me hang in and find the problem.

++ kevin

-- 
Kevin O'Gorman, PhD  (805) 650-6274  mailto:kevin at kosmanor.com
Permanent e-mail forwarder: mailto:Kevin.O'Gorman.64 at Alum.Dartmouth.org
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Web: http://kosmanor.com/~kevin/index.html