[Alpine-info] Are Their Hard Limits in News Group Articles?

[Andrew C Aitchison]

On Mon, 10 Oct 2022, Chime Hart wrote:


> Well, I am trying to open alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.dance in alpine. Yes it 

> crashes with the following:

> [Opening "alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.dance" ... ]

>

> Problem detected: "Bad msgno 1000001 in mail_elt, nmsgs = 1000000, 

> mbx={news.ord.giganews.com:119/nntp/readonly/user="gn319759"}#news.alt.binaries.soun".

> Alpine Exiting.

>

>

>       Attempting to save debug file to /home/chime/.pine-crash

>

> Abort

> Back again live, in looking over that crash log, it mentions

> 08:36:53.303884: IMAP 08:36:53 10/10 mm_log error: Mailbox has more messages 

> (1819586) exist than maximum (1000000)

> 08:36:53.303896: q_status_message(Folder has more messages (1819586) exist 

> than maximum (1000000))

> Back again live, so are their either an article number limit or total number 

> of articles in a group limit? And more importantly, can I get around these? 

> Thanks so much in advance

> Chime


I would try changing the value of MAXMESSAGES in imap/src/c-client/mail.h 
line 47:

grep -3n MAXMESSAGES /home/src/redhat/BUILD/alpine-2.26/imap/src/c-client/mail.h
44-                              * so this is actually len+1. */
45-#define MAXAUTHENTICATORS 8  /* maximum number of SASL authenticators */
46-                             /* maximum number of messages */
47:#define MAXMESSAGES (unsigned long) 1000000
48-#define MAXLOGINTRIALS 3     /* maximum number of client login attempts */
49-#define MAXWILDCARDS 10              /* maximum wildcards allowed in LIST/LSUB */
50-


-- 
Andrew C. Aitchison                      Kendal, UK
                    andrew at aitchison.me.uk