I don't think I'm having a maildrop problem per se, but I think maildrop's behavior may help me sort it out.

I run a qmail-dovecot-squirrelmail server on a debian stable machine. From time to time I POP (using pop3d) the mail from it using fetchmail plus maildrop as the MDA, all running on another debian host.

Some messages seem to hang the fetchmail run; some don't. Here's a typical example in which one message fails retrieval, and two succeeding do not.

--snip-- $ fetchmail -f .fetchmailrc-alison 3 messages for bobby at mydebian.org (10408 octets). reading message bob...@mydebian.org:1 of 3 (2793 octets)..bash: -c: line 0: unexpected EOF while looking for matching `'' bash: -c: line 1: syntax error: unexpected end of file maildrop: error writing to filter. /usr/bin/maildrop: Unable to filter message. fetchmail: MDA returned nonzero status 75 not flushed reading message bob...@mydebian.org:2 of 3 (2574 octets).. flushed reading message bob...@mydebian.org:3 of 3 (5041 octets)..... flushed --snip--

I can't decipher the above. Which machine's bash is having difficulty, the server or the client running fetchmail?

What's odd is that this arrangement between these two machines has run completely smoothly for months, and I'll be jiggered if I know what causes it to go haywire, or, rather, occasionally haywire!

Any thoughts would most appreciated!