[Spambayes] Database corruption [WAS] pop3proxy crashes

[Skip Montanaro]

    >> There are >88,000 words in this database, and apparently the machine
    >> was rebooted without a proper shutdown.  This is bad.

    Doc> I plugged my handspring into a USB port to do a sync (as usual) and
    Doc> the machine completely froze (not as usual). Dead. Could no longer
    Doc> even reach it from other machines on the network. So I had to power
    Doc> down.

    Doc> However, I do note that I was NOT doing any spambayes-related
    Doc> operations at the time (unless pop3proxy goes off and does things
    Doc> in the background, which I don't think it does).

If pop3proxy was running, even if it wasn't analyzing any messages at that
instant, it probably had the database open.  For performance reasons, the
BerkeleyDB library does a fair amount of caching.  It is quite possible the
database was in an invalid state at the time your machine froze.

All may not be lost however.  Did your BerkeleyDB package come with a
db_recover command?  If so, it may be able to repair the damage.

For those who haven't investigated all the mysteries of the BerkeleyDB
package, it comes with a number of command-line programs which manipulate
the database in various ways:

    db_archive     db_deadlock    db_load        db_recover     db_upgrade     
    db_checkpoint  db_dump        db_printlog    db_stat        db_verify      

You can read all about them at

    http://www.sleepycat.com/docs/utility/index.html

Does anyone know if the Windows distribution of Python comes with these
utilities?  If not, it probably should.  db_dump, db_load, db_upgrade
db_verify and db_recover are particularly useful.

Skip