Article 168626 of comp.os.vms:
In article <5jr3vg$964@gap.cco.caltech.edu>,
mathog@seqaxp.bio.caltech.edu wrote:
>The saga of the mangled mail files continued. I'm helping to fix up a
>system which suffered several months of a 9.0 Gb disk while it was still at
>VMS 5.5-2, which doesn't support disks that size. Long story short, this
>shot the disk full of holes, many of which unfortunately landed at key
>places in mail.mai files.
The original poster goes on to ask for a tool, which, among other things,
can construct a MAIL.MAI record for an orphaned MAIL$<16hex_digits>.MAI file:
>3. (This is the hard part)
> Constructs a valid mail.mai record, containing the from, subject, file
> index number, and date file was created, and inserts it into mail.mai.
Here is the information that I know of. I don't claim that this is
exhaustive; in fact, I know it not to be complete. This should help you
construct the records for MAIL.MAI:
Layout of a MAIL.MAI record
Offset Field Length Comments
0 Date-time 8 Primary key for file
8 Folder-name 40 Counted ASCII, fill fields with NUL chars
(Count is unsigned in first byte,
maximum folder-name length is 39 characters.)
48 Attributes 8 Flag bits
Bit 0 is new message
Bit 1 is replied-to
Bit 2 is unknown
Bit 3 is external-file
56 File ident 8 Convert to an ASCII file name according
to the following rules:
If bits <63-48> .eq. 4
then filename = "MAIL$" + 16 hex digits
(MAIL$0004xxxxxxxxxxxx.MAI)
The 12 x's are the leftmost 12 hex digits
of the time stamp.
If bits <63-48> .eq. 5
then reverse the two 32-bit words
and convert to
MAIL$xxxxxxxx0005xxxx.MAI
where the 4 x's following the 5
followed by the 8 x's following the $
are the leftmost 12 hex digits of the
time stamp.
64 Variable information Consists of consecutive TLD fields to
the end of the record. A TLD field
is a 2-byte binary field identifier,
followed by a 2-byte binary length,
followed by data whose length is the
second 2-byte subfield. Zero length is
allowed.
TLD types:
0 From:-line
This contains the nodename-string and username from whom the
mail originated, followed by (optionally) whitespace and a
quoted string. The quoted string, if present, contains the
sender's personal name string and/or the date and time the
message was sent. If both fields are present, the personal
name is first, and is followed by TWO spaces. The personal
name must begin with a letter. If the quoted string begins
with a digit, then it is just the time stamp.
E.g., NODE1::NODE2::DCANTOR "Dave Cantor 29-Apr-1997 12:34:56 -0400"
^_Sender ^pers name ^date-time sent
1 To:-line
2 Subject:-line
3 CC:-line
4 (unknown)
5 Number of lines in message (as a 32-bit number)
(It will appear in DUMP/REC as xxxxxxxx00040005 ;
5 is the TLD type, 4 is the length, xxxxxxxx is the number
of lines in the message.)
6 (unknown)
7 (unknown, but appears that:
a. It is always present
b. It is always of length 20
c. It is the first TLD present
d. It's value is 20 NUL characters.)
Here's a dump of a typical record (which was extracted with
SEARCH/FORMAT=PASSALL), with some obliteration of original contents,
and some commentary:
Record number 14 (0000000E), 193 (00C1) bytes, RFA(0005,0000,01A2)
524F5754 50555308 009AE61D 9D9EA160 `¡...æ...SUPTWOR 000000 8-char folder
00000000 00000000 00000000 0000004B K............... 000010 named "SUPTWORK"
00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 ................ 000020
0005009A E61D9D9E 00000000 00000008 ...........æ.... 000030 external file
MAIL$E61D9D9E0005009A.MAI
00000000 00000000 00000000 00140007 ................ 000040 TLD 7
41424242 00140000 00000000 00000000 ............BBBA 000050
From: BBBARD::USER01
20202020 20203130 52455355 3A3A4452 RD::USER01 000060
5055533A 53595324 53424940 00150001 ....@IBS$SYS:SUP 000070
To: @IBS$SYS:SUPTWORK.DIS
58585800 2C000253 49442E4B 524F5754 TWORK.DIS..,.XXX 000080
2C736D65 6C626F72 70205858 58585858 XXXXXX problems, 000090
Subj: (begins with "XXXXXXXXX", ends with "deals")
7263206E 65747469 72772D66 6C616820 half-written cr 0000A0
00004800 04000573 6C616564 2073736F oss deals....H.. 0000B0 72 lines in msg.
00 ................ 0000C0
I hope this helps.
Dave Cantor
--
David A. Cantor +1 617-664-0243
State Street Bank, Boston, Mass. ^NEW^
I speak for myself only; not for my employer.
Personal e-mail to DCantor@shore.net