<html dir="ltr"><head></head><body style="text-align:left; direction:ltr;" bgcolor="#29353b" text="#cfd8dc" link="#55bcea" vlink="#cfd8dc"><div>No problem. VM's webmail keeping everything annoys the hell out of me too. Periodically, typically on boring conference calls, I'll clear it out. Best method I found is give it half an hour to load at login, then scroll the bar on the left down to load more messages half a dozen times. Then select all, then delete. Rinse, repeat and say, "Sorry, I missed the question. Please can you repeat it." as necessary.</div><div><br></div><div>Some of those Nigerian Billionaires are legit... <a href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:JUrKQ98XtLcJ:www.bbspot.com/News/2003/09/nigerian_millions.html+&cd=10&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=de&client=firefox-b-d">https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:JUrKQ98XtLcJ:www.bbspot.com/News/2003/09/nigerian_millions.html+&cd=10&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=de&client=firefox-b-d</a></div><div><br></div><div>Matt</div><div><br></div><div>On Tue, 2020-06-09 at 19:00 +0100, James Wyper wrote:</div><blockquote type="cite" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex; border-left:2px #729fcf solid;padding-left:1ex"><pre>Thank you – it didn’t occur to me that they would still allow an insecure </pre><pre>connection (smtp has been locked down to TLS-only for ages). I’ve now </pre><pre>deleted the aberrant message despite its kind offer of the chance to share </pre><pre>in several million USD deposited by a government official in some corrupt </pre><pre>part of Africa.</pre><pre><br></pre><pre>Even though I pull my emails with the “no keep” option in fetchmail (and the </pre><pre>pop3 session only showed that single message) VM’s webmail keeps every </pre><pre>single message that we’ve ever been sent – so it’s now almost unusable </pre><pre>because it frequently times out trying even the simplest inbox operations. </pre><pre>I’m guessing they duplicate each incoming mail and push one copy to the pop </pre><pre>server and the other to the webmail / imap one.</pre><pre><br></pre><pre>Thanks again</pre><pre>James</pre><pre><br></pre><pre>From: matt johnston</pre><pre>Sent: Tuesday, June 9, 2020 7:44 AM</pre><pre>To: James Wyper ; Sclug@Sclug. Uk</pre><pre>Subject: Re: [sclug] POP / Fetchmail - how to get rid of a stuck message</pre><pre><br></pre><pre>Hi James,</pre><pre><br></pre><pre>Wow, this takes me back. My first proper job was supporting NTL's doomed </pre><pre>internet set top boxes when they launched ntlworld, Project1 as it was </pre><pre>known. Ah, the late 90s!!! Y2K panic, the heady days before broadband, </pre><pre>Netscape, Eurdora and clearing out large or corrupt mails from customer's </pre><pre>inboxes with telnet.</pre><pre><br></pre><pre>My favourite ever call, and customer, was from this job. A lovely lady from </pre><pre>Swansea, trying to get online for the first time, at her wits end. "I'm </pre><pre>typing in my password, see, and it's just coming up STARS." But I digress...</pre><pre><br></pre><pre>Try vanilla telnet to the server, that still seems to work OK:</pre><pre><br></pre><pre>[matt@kraken ~]$ telnet pop3.ntlworld.com 110</pre><pre>Trying 62.254.26.206...</pre><pre>Connected to pop3.ntlworld.com.</pre><pre>Escape character is '^]'.</pre><pre>+OK Virgin Media POP3 server ready [ e4c558782NTL ].</pre><pre>user wypers</pre><pre>+OK</pre><pre><br></pre><pre>Or skin the cat by other means and have a clear out via the webmail </pre><pre>interface... mail.ntlworld.com in your browser's address bar will redirect </pre><pre>you to the Virgin Media e-mail portal.</pre><pre><br></pre><pre>Best of luck!</pre><pre><br></pre><pre>Matt</pre><pre><br></pre><pre>On Mon, 2020-06-08 at 19:17 +0100, James Wyper via Sclug wrote:</pre><pre><br></pre><pre>Hi</pre><pre><br></pre><pre>I’ve got an old-fashioned email set-up that pre-dates my ISP offering IMAP </pre><pre>access – in fact I set this up after asking this group for advice ~16 years </pre><pre>ago (thanks again!). I use fetchmail to pull messages from my ISP’s POP3 </pre><pre>server and then (via postfix) dump them onto a server which in turn runs </pre><pre>IMAP and makes the email available to multiple devices. This works well for </pre><pre>me and I’m in no hurry to change it.</pre><pre><br></pre><pre>Except.. I keep getting a message like this in /var/log/mail.log – it’s </pre><pre>nothing more than an annoyance but I’d appreciate advice on how I might get </pre><pre>rid of it.</pre><pre><br></pre><pre>Jun 8 18:00:24 karelia dovecot: imap-login: Login: user=<james>, </pre><pre>method=PLAIN, rip=86.17.172.114, lip=192.168.0.99, mpid=13979, </pre><pre>session=<tB7/i5WnovtWEaxy></pre><pre>Jun 8 18:00:24 karelia dovecot: imap(james): Logged out in=120 out=1139</pre><pre>Jun 8 18:00:53 karelia dovecot: imap-login: Login: user=<james>, </pre><pre>method=PLAIN, rip=86.17.172.114, lip=192.168.0.99, mpid=13984, TLS, </pre><pre>session=<p/m2jZWnXsJWEaxy></pre><pre>Jun 8 18:02:26 karelia dovecot: imap(james): Logged out in=135593 </pre><pre>out=75268385</pre><pre>Jun 8 18:02:48 karelia fetchmail[2214]: 1 message for wypers@<redacted> at </pre><pre>pop3.ntlworld.com (1942 octets).</pre><pre>Jun 8 18:02:48 karelia postfix/smtpd[13996]: connect from </pre><pre>localhost[127.0.0.1]</pre><pre>Jun 8 18:02:48 karelia postfix/smtpd[13996]: warning: Illegal address </pre><pre>syntax from localhost[127.0.0.1] in MAIL command: <zydnsacabyinv@></pre><pre>Jun 8 18:02:48 karelia fetchmail[2214]: reading message </pre><pre>wypers@<redacted>@pop3.ntlworld.com:1 of 1 (1942 octets) not flushed</pre><pre>Jun 8 18:02:48 karelia postfix/smtpd[13996]: disconnect from </pre><pre>localhost[127.0.0.1] ehlo=1 mail=0/1 rset=1 quit=1 commands=3/4</pre><pre>Jun 8 18:02:48 karelia dovecot: imap-login: Login: user=<james>, </pre><pre>method=PLAIN, rip=86.17.172.114, lip=192.168.0.99, mpid=14002, TLS, </pre><pre>session=<M82dlJWnuppWEaxy></pre><pre>Jun 8 18:02:50 karelia dovecot: imap(james): Connection closed (STATUS </pre><pre>finished 1.316 secs ago) in=348 out=976</pre><pre><br></pre><pre>I’m assuming that the problem is a malformed email on the POP3 server that </pre><pre>fetchmail can’t fetch and delete because my local postfix rejects it.</pre><pre><br></pre><pre>To verify this I’ve tried to log on to VirginMedia’s POP3 server manually </pre><pre>with</pre><pre><br></pre><pre>openssl s_client -connect pop3.ntlworld.com:995</pre><pre><br></pre><pre>and get as far as</pre><pre><br></pre><pre>+OK Virgin Media POP3 server ready [ e4c558782NTL ].</pre><pre><br></pre><pre>When I then enter</pre><pre><br></pre><pre>USER <same email address as in /etc/fetchmailrc></pre><pre><br></pre><pre>it hangs for a minute and then dumps me out with</pre><pre><br></pre><pre>read:errno=0</pre><pre><br></pre><pre>Does anyone know the correct incantation to get command-line access to </pre><pre>Virgin’s POP3 server, or other client methods I could try to find and delete </pre><pre>this message? Or am I looking in the wrong place?</pre><pre><br></pre><pre>Thanks</pre><pre>James</pre><pre><br></pre></blockquote></body></html>