Sylfeed error: "/can't write file"

Forum: Apps
Topic: Sylfeed error: "/can't write file"
started by: yangmusa

Posted by yangmusa on Aug. 26 2007,01:51

Hi,

This may be partially my fault.. I set up Sylfeed to download mail from my Gmail account, using POP3. Clicked Get Mail, and it set off - downloading everything in my Gmail account since I started using it several years ago. Several thousand messages! So I cancelled, and went to my home folder and deleted the mail file that seemed to have been generated. I pretty much decided not to use Sylfeed.

But since Firefox seems to crash a lot, even freezing the whole machine completely. So I want to give Sylfeed another try. This time I set up GMail POP to only download new mail from now on. However, when I click get mail I get the error "Can't write file". Which file? And can I create it manually? I tried sending mail too, that also failed but I can't remember the error message.

Any ideas?

Posted by roberts on Aug. 26 2007,03:37

Sylpheed creates two folders in your home directory,

.sylpheed/
Mail/

Perhaps the offending file can be indentified in one or both of those directories. If you are only testing and don't care about their contents then remove both folders to start a new.

Posted by yangmusa on Aug. 26 2007,05:46

Once I realized that Sylfeed is officially called "Sylpheed" it became much easier to solve ;-) (The command, and label, in DSL are both sylfeed...)

So I did a Google search, and all I needed to do was delete folderlist.xml in ./sylfeed Now it receives no problem, though I still haven't been able to send. I'm in the process of doublechecking my POP3 settings..

PS - just back from my first LUG meeting, and a guy there had a fresh copy of the new DSL book that he's going to review.Hot off the presses!

Posted by yangmusa on Aug. 26 2007,06:10

Nope, my POP settings are just fine. The messages I'm sending are actually getting out - but I get an error "Error occurred while sending the message". From searching around, it seems this is due to an error with the way Google implements SMTP. When the mail client sends a message to tell Gmail POP that it has finished sending, the Gmail POP server is supposed to acknowledge. However, this isn't happening, hence the error message.

This is pretty annoying, since the message now remains open and I have to manually close the error message and either save the message as a draft or delete it. Urrgh, this shouldn't be necessary.