1. You invoke elm, and you get either one of the following error messages:

   You seem to have ELM already reading this mail!
   
   You may not have two copies of ELM running simultaneously.  -- Exiting --
   If this is in error, then you'll need to remove the following file:
                    /tmp/mbox.username
   

   Or:

   Waiting to read mailbox while mail is being received: attempt #0
   

2. You invoke pine, and you get this error message at the bottom of your pine window:

   [Mailbox is open by another process, access is readonly]
   

Run the command

    fixmail.

It will stop any elm or pine session that may be running in the background and remove any lock files. You can only have one elm session running at a time. You can have more than one pine session running, but (depending on the version of pine) the first pine session may keep your mailbox locked, and all subsequent pine sessions will be readonly.

If you frequently run into this problem, make sure that you always quit from elm or pine and then exit from the chemistry Unix server. Don't just terminate your telnet session via the pull-down menu on your PC or Mac (this will likely leave elm or pine running in the background).

1. You invoke elm, and you get the following error messages:

   Reading in /var/mail/username, message: 0
   Folder is corrupt!!  I can't read it!!
   Discarding any changes made to mail folder ...
   

2. You invoke pine, and you get this error message at the bottom of your pine window:

   [Can't open inbox (file /var/mail/username): not in valid mailbox format]
   

Use an editor of your choice (emacs, vi, pico), edit your mail spool (/var/mail/username) and remove the extra characters preceeding the "From".

Or run the command

    fixmail.

Your mail spool file probably began with the characters "xit". Any message in the mail spool file must always begin with the word "From".

You probably inserted these characters yourself when you where using elm. You probably typed "exit" to leave elm. This is not the correct way to leave elm. In the past, ironically, this would have worked since elm interpreted your keystrokes as the following single-character commands:

e       - nothing
x       - exit the mail, first asking for confirmation
it      - confimation asked for an "n" or "y", but defaults to "yes"
return  - elm exits

The newer version of elm has the character "e" mapped to the command "edit mail spool file". When you typed "xit", the rest of the word "exit", you found yourself in an unfamiliar condition. You either exited elm properly or simply terminated your connection to the chemistry Unix server. Either way, the characters "xit" were left at the top of the file and poisoned further attempts to read mail.

Remember to always exit elm with the characters, "q", "Q", "x" or "X".

The q's delete mail that was marked for deletion and possibly resort the mail, the x's exit without changing the mail spool file; the lowercase versions will ask for confirmation, and the uppercase versions, Q & X just quit or exit without asking.