[maildropl] error writing to filter (bogofilter)

[David Relson]

On Sun, 16 Jun 2013 20:12:04 +0100
Christian Ebert wrote:

> * David Relson on Sunday, June 16, 2013 at 11:27:10 -0400
> > I was expecting that stdin.out would be 8k, not the 40k shown.   
> > 
> > Since 40k is far short of the 333,309 bytes in the problem message,
> > I conclude this is a MacOS specific problem -- possibly a maildrop
> > issue, but more likely a pipe issue.
> 
> Or rather Mac OS with 64bit architecture and maildrop.
> Interestingly enough the fink package manager does not offer
> maildrop for Mac OS > 10.6:
> http://pdb.finkproject.org/pdb/package.php/maildrop?rel_id=10.5-i386-current-stable
> 
> > Of course as I wrote the above, another possibility occurred. Within
> > the bogofilter debug output, the problem manifests itself in
> > yyinput. This is part of the grammar generated by flex.  Past
> > experience shows that flex isn't perfect. Bogofilter's build
> > includes patches for some old versions of flex, though none are
> > needed for v2.5.35 and later versions.  Possibly flex has an
> > issue...
> 
> $ flex --version
> flex 2.5.35 Apple(flex-31)
> 
> But as it worked on the older Mac ...
> 
> I also tried with compiling both bogofilter and maildrop against
> fink's so-called flex-devel:
> 
> flex-devel-2.5.35-2: Fast lexical analyser generator
>  Flex is a tool for generating programs that require pattern-matching
>  on text. It is usually used together with yacc/bison to automatically
>  generate a parser for a language grammar, e.g. the syntax of a
>  configuration file.
>  .
>  This is a version of Flex that generates better C++ code than the
>  standard 2.5.4 Flex, but also has some compatibility problems with
>  the older flex as well, so it installs into /sw/lib/flex and must
>  be explicitly linked by projects that want to use it.
>  .
>  Usage Notes:
>  You will need to explicitly add the paths to this version of flex
>  to your environment to use it (so that it doesn't get in the way of
>  the "regular" flex).
>  .
>  Generally you should be able to do it by doing something like:
>  .
>    export PATH="/sw/lib/flex/bin:$PATH"
>    export CPPFLAGS="-I/sw/lib/flex/include"
>    export LDFLAGS="-L/sw/lib/flex/lib"
>  .
>  Web site: http://flex.sourceforge.net/
>  .
>  Maintainer: Benjamin Reed <flex-devel at fink.racoonfink.com>
> 
> But it did not change the problem.
>  
> > Upon further reflection, a flex issue wouldn't cause the stdin.out
> > size problem, and I return to the problem being with maildrop or
> > pipes.
> 
> My bet is still maildrop - or rather maildrop on this OS version.

'Tis definitely possible that maildrop's xfilter option is only
outputting 8k bytes.  Is there any way you can build maildrop and add
debug code to see what it's doing?