Hi Jerry,

 Thanks, I understand that the installer defaults to either c:\pmail, or the path of the last install.

My concern is that the installer offers you the opportunity to change the default, but does not check the validity of the path entered. (In this case I used the "Browse" button rather than type in a path directly). The installer then enters as much of the path as it can, then silently truncates the entry without complaint.

When you then invoke PMail after installing, it simply grinds to a halt, also without offering an error message to help you fix the problem.

 Cheers,

 Garry

Hi,

As I am moving away from doing regular network backups I want to move my mail files to a dropbox folder.

In the past, both VERY distant (When I tried to log in today the site rejected my bama listserve ID) and more recent, I have not had any problems moving my mail files, but this time I am stumped.

I wanted to move my mail files from "C:\Exe\Pmail\" to "C:\Documents and Settings\gcollins\My Documents\Dropbox\Laptop_only\Pmail\".

After spending many hours beating my head against a wall, I did a "clean" install of PMail in the above directory with the intent of moving the existing mail files and tweaking the .ini file.

Sadly, even though it installed without an error message, PMail will not work in this directory. I suspect it is because the PMAIL.CFG file contains;

"C:\Documents and Settings\gcollins\My Documents\Dropbox\Laptop_onlC:\Documents and Settings\gcollins\My Documents\Dropbox\Laptop_onl" ... it seems that this field is limited to 66 characters.

Before I try and move my Dropbox folder to get a shorter path, has anyone struck this before?

Many thanks,

Garry.

Have you tried reducing the length by coding the short path style, ie c:\Docume~1\gcollins\mydocu~1\dropbox\laptop~1    I am not sure why this is repeated on the example you supplied?

Martin 

Hi Martin,

Thanks, no I have not tried short path style, this was the entry as entered by the PMail installer. It is a good idea, I may try it.

The pmail.ini file has two entries, the Working home mailbox location, and the New mailbox location. Similarly the Windows registery has entries for "Mailbox" and "Newmail", so I suspect the two entries in the pmail.cfg file are the same. If I look at a pmail.cfg file that was created with a shorter path, I still see two entries starting at byte 0 and byte 67 (decimal), this is the same position as in the file with the truncated path entries.

So, I have a couple of questions.
There are path entries in three different places, the Windows registry, in a file called programs/pmail.cfg, and in a file called mail/admin/pmail.ini. Which entries are actually used?
The Pmail installer happily accepted a path longer than 66 bytes, but the pconfig.exe will limit path entries to 64 bytes or less, and each entry is truncated at 66 bytes in the pmail.cfg file, is the installer at fault?
The structure of the pmail.cfg file implies a path limit of 64 bytes for the two entries, and the rest of the file, other than a 02 at 84H is full of 00H. What is pmail.cfg used for?

Many thanks,

Garry.

Hope Martin doesn't mind me chiming in here...

The pmail.cfg file tells Pegasus Mail where the mailbox folders reside.  It is updated using pconfig.exe which is relic from the early days of Pegasus Mail.  It is a DOS app so you should use a DOS path in it (eg: c:\Docume~1\gcollins\mydocu~1\dropbox\laptop~1).

As for the pmail.ini file, one resides in each Pegasus Mail users mailbox.  It contains most of the configuration settings for that user.

When looking at the mailbox paths in those two files you should see that the path in pmail.cfg contains the path to the root mailbox folder (in DOS path format) followed by a command substitution for the username(mailbox folder) of either ~8 or ~N.  The ~8 substitutes the first eight characters of the username and the ~N substitutes the entire user name.  The ~8 is residual from the days of DOS (before long filenames) but may still be found on some older installations (like mine).   So, if you are Pegasus Mail user "Admin" Pegasus Mail looks at the paths in the pmail.cfg file then appends the user name to the path which is how it knows which mailbox folder to open up in.  It then reads the pmail.ini file (among others) to open Pegasus Mail as the Admin user.

 Regarding the starting position of the two paths in pmail.cfg (at byte 0 and byte 67) is important though I don't understand the programming details.  No doubt this is where the 64 byte limit comes in.  Pmail.cfg is one of the few configuration files in Pegasus Mail that shouldn't be edited with a text editor.

Keep in mind that pconfig is not used with a normal install.  It is when mailboxes are moved that pconfig must be used to update pmail.cfg.

As for the registry entries, I am curious about that myself.  It makes sense that there be registry entries to the main executables folder but I don't know why there would be registry entries to the mailbox folders unless they are used by updates.  I certainly expect pconfig to be gone in the next version so the registry entries may be in preparation for that.

Please go ahead and chime all you want....

In answer to your last question about Registries. This is a duplication of information held in various places, as you point out. It is there as a convenience to us programmers who need an Api to call to get environmental information about Pegasus Mail locations and user names. I suspect that Registries entries might go away rather than PConfi.exe, as there are numerous problems with regular users accessing the Registry, and the potential for real system-wide damage if updates are performed on it incorrectly.

As for PCofig.exe, this is a critical file, that primarily provides and maintains the location of the folders (NewMail and folder system). It is however used by User Defined Gateways (UDGs). These allow things like interfacing directly with Fax machines. See Udg.txt or Udg.zip for details. PConfig also maintains important information on Novell Netware locations and data, used by Pegasus Mail when required..

Martin 

Hi guys,

 Thanks, I think have enough information to get done what I want done.

 As an aside, should I (or can I) raise a bug report for the installer, it should not silently write erroneous paths in the cfg file??

Cheers,

Garry.

[quote user="Garry Collins"] As an aside, should I (or can I) raise a bug report for the installer, it should not silently write erroneous paths in the cfg file??[/quote]

The installer has never offered any other path but c:\pmail by default. Either somebody manually changed or entered any different paths or else the path of installed version last run was different from default and installer detected that and set to match the old path. All the way back to the days of MSDOS PMail default has been c:\pmail and remains that in most recent v4.63 though by default executables now are placed into c:\pmail\programs and also by default c:\pmail\mail\admin is the default user and also home and new mail location.

If you want to make a suggestion for installer change post it to Pegasus Mail Suggestions. Maybe your suggestion might be to never allow anything other than c:\pmail initially. Your current path would in fact be illegal, not workable, with Vista and later OS anyhow which do not permit applications to write data to any program files or program files (x86) location. When Pegasus Mail is installed to c:\pmail it works fine with Vista and later OS systems.  Old XP and earlier did allow program files location to be used for programs that wrote data to their install location and use of program files was just a Microsoft invention that Microsoft programs used for their install location and they usually wrote data to a separate location outside of the program files location. Documents and settings was another Microsoft location used for data but it never had been used by Pegasus Mail or was even suggested that Pegasus Mail had any connection to that location.