NetBSD Problem Report #52404

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Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2017 02:24:46 +0000 (UTC)
From: MMichael@Nareg.Com.AU
Reply-To: MMichael@Nareg.Com.AU
To: gnats-bugs@NetBSD.org
Subject: Date of User mail in mail directory sometimes shows "Jan 1 1970"
X-Send-Pr-Version: www-1.0

>Number:         52404
>Category:       misc
>Synopsis:       Date of User mail in mail directory sometimes shows "Jan 1 1970"
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       critical
>Priority:       high
>Responsible:    misc-bug-people
>State:          closed
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   net
>Arrival-Date:   Sat Jul 15 02:25:00 +0000 2017
>Closed-Date:    Sun Dec 03 22:47:59 +0000 2023
>Last-Modified:  Sun Dec 03 22:47:59 +0000 2023
>Originator:     Michael Ghougassian
>Release:        NetBSD-7.1-i386-install.img.gz
>Organization:
Nareg Internet Pty Ltd
>Environment:
NetBSD one.nareg.com.au 7.1 NetBSD 7.1 (GENERIC.201703111743Z) i386
>Description:
In mail directory ls -al shows the following:
-rw------ 1 USERNAME wheel  size Jan 1  1970   USERNAME

About 10% of the users show this invalid date "sometimes" and is not specific to a USERNAME it keeps changing and ALSO while there is no mail activity.
>How-To-Repeat:
It randomly appears different while running

ls -al ; sleep 15

>Fix:
very random and critical as I look for date change to detect arrival of new mail

>Release-Note:

>Audit-Trail:
From: christos@zoulas.com (Christos Zoulas)
To: gnats-bugs@NetBSD.org, port-i386-maintainer@netbsd.org, 
	gnats-admin@netbsd.org, netbsd-bugs@netbsd.org
Cc: 
Subject: Re: port-i386/52404: Date of User mail in mail directory sometimes shows "Jan 1 1970"
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2017 07:59:15 -0400

 On Jul 15,  2:25am, MMichael@Nareg.Com.AU (MMichael@Nareg.Com.AU) wrote:
 -- Subject: port-i386/52404: Date of User mail in mail directory sometimes sh


 What do you use as the MTA and MUA?

 christos

From: "Michael Ghougassian" <Michael@Nareg.Com.AU>
To: gnats-bugs@NetBSD.org
Cc: 
Subject: Re: port-i386/52404: Date of User mail in mail directory sometimes
 shows "Jan 1 1970"
Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2017 00:46:44 +1000

 Dear Christos,

 I am using postfix with only virtual and main.cf as have been for a decade.

 The problem is without any mail activity, JUST "ls -al" shows the date
 wrong sometimes for some files in mail directory only. that means it can
 not be ls that is faulty.

 The content of the email file is correct "not corrupted".

 I used squirrelmail and microsoft outtlook and both show no problems with
 content.

 Only LS shows the wrong date stamp !!!!

 HINT in /var I have a link for mail to /mail which is a partition. If that
 will help.

 Regards,
 Michael

 PS I have been using 5.2 up till now without any problems, just decided to
 change.


 > The following reply was made to PR port-i386/52404; it has been noted by
 > GNATS.
 >
 > From: christos@zoulas.com (Christos Zoulas)
 > To: gnats-bugs@NetBSD.org, port-i386-maintainer@netbsd.org,
 > 	gnats-admin@netbsd.org, netbsd-bugs@netbsd.org
 > Cc:
 > Subject: Re: port-i386/52404: Date of User mail in mail directory
 > sometimes shows "Jan 1 1970"
 > Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2017 07:59:15 -0400
 >
 >  On Jul 15,  2:25am, MMichael@Nareg.Com.AU (MMichael@Nareg.Com.AU) wrote:
 >  -- Subject: port-i386/52404: Date of User mail in mail directory
 > sometimes sh
 >
 >
 >  What do you use as the MTA and MUA?
 >
 >  christos
 >
 >

From: christos@zoulas.com (Christos Zoulas)
To: gnats-bugs@NetBSD.org, port-i386-maintainer@netbsd.org, 
	gnats-admin@netbsd.org, netbsd-bugs@netbsd.org, MMichael@Nareg.Com.AU
Cc: 
Subject: Re: port-i386/52404: Date of User mail in mail directory sometimes shows "Jan 1 1970"
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2017 12:15:15 -0400

 On Jul 15,  4:05pm, Michael@Nareg.Com.AU ("Michael Ghougassian") wrote:
 -- Subject: Re: port-i386/52404: Date of User mail in mail directory sometime


 That's very strange since creating a file gets by default the current
 timestamp. So the file gets created with the wrong timestamp and then
 changes to the correct one seconds later?

 christos

From: David Holland <dholland-bugs@netbsd.org>
To: gnats-bugs@NetBSD.org
Cc: 
Subject: Re: port-i386/52404: Date of User mail in mail directory sometimes
 shows "Jan 1 1970"
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2017 16:55:24 +0000

 On Sat, Jul 15, 2017 at 02:25:00AM +0000, MMichael@Nareg.Com.AU wrote:
  > In mail directory ls -al shows the following:
  > -rw------ 1 USERNAME wheel  size Jan 1  1970   USERNAME
  > 
  > About 10% of the users show this invalid date "sometimes" and is
  > not specific to a USERNAME it keeps changing and ALSO while there
  > is no mail activity.
  >
  > It randomly appears different while running
  > 
  > ls -al ; sleep 15

 So it doesn't require a new mail to come in for the timestamp to
 change, either to 1970 or back?

 What filesystem is /var/mail?

 -- 
 David A. Holland
 dholland@netbsd.org

State-Changed-From-To: open->feedback
State-Changed-By: dholland@NetBSD.org
State-Changed-When: Wed, 06 Dec 2017 02:29:27 +0000
State-Changed-Why:
I asked a question in July


From: "Michael Ghougassian" <Michael@Nareg.Com.AU>
To: gnats-bugs@NetBSD.org
Cc: 
Subject: Re: port-i386/52404: Date of User mail in mail directory sometimes
 shows "Jan 1 1970"
Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2018 19:32:42 +1100

 To whom it may concern,


 I am attaching output from "df" on NetBSD 7.1 (GENERIC.201703111743Z)

 Filesystem  512-blocks     Used       Avail %Cap Mounted on
 /dev/wd0a     10166188   176260     9481620   1% /
 /dev/wd0f     40665004   399612    38232144   1% /var
 /dev/wd0e     40665004  1727888    36903868   4% /usr
 /dev/wd0g    187046560 38068792   139625440  21% /home
 /dev/wd0h     20430700   848504    18560664   4% /mail
 kernfs               2        2           0 100% /kern
 ptyfs                2        2           0 100% /dev/pts
 procfs               8        8           0 100% /proc
 tmpfs           519256        0      519256   0% /var/shm


 I should also point out that in /var I have a link "mail -> /mail"

 I hope this is enough info to get to the bottom.

 Regards,
 Michael

 Dear Christos,

 I am using postfix with only virtual and main.cf as have been for a decade.

 The problem is without any mail activity, JUST "ls -al" shows the date
 wrong sometimes for some files in mail directory only. that means it can
 not be ls that is faulty.

 The content of the email file is correct "not corrupted".

 I used squirrelmail and microsoft outtlook and both show no problems with
 content.

 Only LS shows the wrong date stamp !!!!

 HINT in /var I have a link for mail to /mail which is a partition. If that
 will help.

 Regards,
 Michael

 PS I have been using 5.2 up till now without any problems, just decided to
 change.


 > The following reply was made to PR port-i386/52404; it has been noted by
 GNATS.
 >
 > From: christos@zoulas.com (Christos Zoulas)
 > To: gnats-bugs@NetBSD.org, port-i386-maintainer@netbsd.org,
 > 	gnats-admin@netbsd.org, netbsd-bugs@netbsd.org
 > Cc:
 > Subject: Re: port-i386/52404: Date of User mail in mail directory
 sometimes shows "Jan 1 1970"
 > Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2017 07:59:15 -0400
 >
 >  On Jul 15,  2:25am, MMichael@Nareg.Com.AU (MMichael@Nareg.Com.AU)
 wrote: -- Subject: port-i386/52404: Date of User mail in mail directory
 > sometimes sh
 >
 >
 >  What do you use as the MTA and MUA?
 >
 >  christos
 >
 >



From: "Michael Ghougassian" <Michael@Nareg.Com.AU>
To: gnats-bugs@gnats.netbsd.org
Cc: 
Subject: Re: port-i386/52404: Date of User mail in mail directory sometimes
 shows "Jan 1 1970"
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2018 16:15:51 +1100

 To whom it may concern,


 I am attaching output from "df" on NetBSD 7.1 (GENERIC.201703111743Z)

 Filesystem  512-blocks     Used       Avail %Cap Mounted on
 /dev/wd0a     10166188   176260     9481620   1% /
 /dev/wd0f     40665004   399612    38232144   1% /var
 /dev/wd0e     40665004  1727888    36903868   4% /usr
 /dev/wd0g    187046560 38068792   139625440  21% /home
 /dev/wd0h     20430700   848504    18560664   4% /mail
 kernfs               2        2           0 100% /kern
 ptyfs                2        2           0 100% /dev/pts
 procfs               8        8           0 100% /proc
 tmpfs           519256        0      519256   0% /var/shm


 I should also point out that in /var I have a link "mail -> /mail"

 I hope this is enough info to get to the bottom.

 Regards,
 Michael

 Dear Christos,

 I am using postfix with only virtual and main.cf as have been for a decade.

 The problem is without any mail activity, JUST "ls -al" shows the date
 wrong sometimes for some files in mail directory only. that means it can
 not be ls that is faulty.

 The content of the email file is correct "not corrupted".

 I used squirrelmail and microsoft outtlook and both show no problems with
 content.

 Only LS shows the wrong date stamp !!!!

 HINT in /var I have a link for mail to /mail which is a partition. If that
 will help.

 Regards,
 Michael

 PS I have been using 5.2 up till now without any problems, just decided to
 change.


 > The following reply was made to PR port-i386/52404; it has been noted by
 GNATS.
 >
 > From: christos@zoulas.com (Christos Zoulas)
 > To: gnats-bugs@NetBSD.org, port-i386-maintainer@netbsd.org,
 > 	gnats-admin@netbsd.org, netbsd-bugs@netbsd.org
 > Cc:
 > Subject: Re: port-i386/52404: Date of User mail in mail directory
 sometimes shows "Jan 1 1970"
 > Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2017 07:59:15 -0400
 >
 >  On Jul 15,  2:25am, MMichael@Nareg.Com.AU (MMichael@Nareg.Com.AU)
 wrote: -- Subject: port-i386/52404: Date of User mail in mail directory
 > sometimes sh
 >
 >
 >  What do you use as the MTA and MUA?
 >
 >  christos
 >
 >





From: "Michael Ghougassian" <MMichael@Nareg.Com.AU>
To: gnats-bugs@gnats.netbsd.org
Cc: 
Subject: Re: port-i386/52404
Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2018 17:42:11 +1000

 To whom it may concern,

 I have replied to this request.

 Michael



 > This is an infrequent reminder that there is 1 Problem Report
 > (PR) of yours in the NetBSD GNATS database in "feedback" state.
 >
 > Problem Reports in this state require additional information
 > before they can be resolved. Most often, this is information
 > required from the user who submitted the Problem Report in the
 > first place; occasionally, information is required from some
 > other source to resolve the reported problem.
 >
 > The GNATS problem report database operates primarily through
 > Internet E-mail. To provide feedback to a problem report, or
 > additional information, send E-mail to gnats-bugs@gnats.netbsd.org,
 > with the Subject: field set to "Re: category/number", e.g.
 >
 > 	Subject: Re: port-eniac/1234
 >
 > and the GNATS PR database will append that message to the PR
 > already in the database. You can also find these instructions at
 >
 > 	http://gnats.NetBSD.org/send-pr.html#appending
 >
 > To see a summary of the whole PR database, please see
 >
 > 	http://gnats.NetBSD.org/summary/
 >
 > If you wish to perform an arbitrary query on the database, please see
 >
 > 	http://gnats.NetBSD.org/query-pr.html
 >
 > For additional helpful documentation, please see
 >
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 > 	http://gnats.NetBSD.org/send-pr.html#pr-fields
 > 	http://gnats.NetBSD.org/send-pr.html#pr-states
 >
 > Please examine the full text and history of the Problem Report
 > listed below by following the given URL with a web browser.
 > The audit trail of action will be at the bottom of each report,
 > and should list what information is required to solve the problem
 > and close the report.
 >
 > 	______________________________________________________________
 >
 > port-i386/52404 - critical high priority sw-bug
 > 	Date of User mail in mail directory sometimes shows "Jan 1 1970"
 > 	http://gnats.NetBSD.org/cgi-bin/query-pr-single.pl?number=52404
 >
 >

State-Changed-From-To: feedback->open
State-Changed-By: wiz@NetBSD.org
State-Changed-When: Thu, 05 Apr 2018 09:05:27 +0000
State-Changed-Why:
Feedback was supplied


From: Robert Elz <kre@munnari.OZ.AU>
To: gnats-bugs@NetBSD.org
Cc: gnats-admin@netbsd.org
Subject: Re: port-i386/52404
Date: Thu, 05 Apr 2018 16:45:49 +0700

 Unfortunately a loti of things can touch user mailboxes - looking to be
 able to say "you have mail" is a common feature long running interactive
 processes tend to like to support - essentially all shells can do this
 for example, so can gkrellm (and probably a whole bunch of other
 similar monitoring programs, desktop environments, and similar - for all
 I know, emacs might do it as well, it does everything else possible on
 the system...)

 I doubt that postfix is related, nor the mail reading programs (though
 they are not impossible - something like thunderbird is probably
 constantly monitoring so it can announce when new mail is available,
 other long running mail programs (user agents) may be similar).

 None of these (except mail delivery, and actually accessing mail to
 read/reply/delete etc) should cause the mailbox to be altered in any
 way at all - but bugs in any of them could do just about anything.

 What you probably need to do for this, is monitor the mailboxes looking
 for when one changes (it is certainly not ls that is incorrect here, if ls
 says the mod time is 1 Jan 1970 (ie: (time_t)0) then that is what it has
 been set to - by something.

 When you see a mailbox has changed, look and see what processes the
 user who owns that mailbox, and what root owned processes are running.

 Keep doing that for a while, and when you have enough data, look for what
 is common (and might be something which could be looking at users' mailboxes)

 When you have a suspect, use that yourself and see if your mailbox gets
 affected.     If you can find which process is likely doing this, let us know, 
 and we might be able to work out why - but without knowing what is running
 on your system that might be poking at mailboxes, and doing things to them,
 there is little else we can do - neither the filesystems, nor ls, randonly 
 change the times of files.

 kre

 ps: it would also be useful to see the output of

 	mount | grep mail

 the output from df is kind of useful, but does not reveal the
 interesting information.   I doubt we will learn anything from
 this, but it is possible.

 pps: to gnats-admin (dholland I presume) - this PR ought to be
 moved out of port-i386 to somewhere more rational...

Responsible-Changed-From-To: port-i386-maintainer->misc-bug-people
Responsible-Changed-By: dholland@NetBSD.org
Responsible-Changed-When: Wed, 17 May 2023 09:50:11 +0000
Responsible-Changed-Why:
more appropriate categorization


State-Changed-From-To: open->feedback
State-Changed-By: dholland@NetBSD.org
State-Changed-When: Wed, 17 May 2023 09:50:11 +0000
State-Changed-Why:
Did you ever find what was causing this? Is it still happening?

Also you never told us what file system type (ffs, zfs, etc.) you
were using on your mail partition.

Another thing to try: when it happens use ls -lT to get the exact
time and see if it's midnight UTC (that is, timestamp 0) or 23:59:59
(that is, timestamp -1) ... if it's -1 that's likely a clue.


State-Changed-From-To: feedback->closed
State-Changed-By: dholland@NetBSD.org
State-Changed-When: Sun, 03 Dec 2023 22:47:59 +0000
State-Changed-Why:
The submitter wrote in to say this no longer happens in -9.


>Unformatted:

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