Mac OS X 10.3.9: Mail Problems
Now here is an interesting problem with Apple Mail on a Mac running Mac OS X 10.3.9…
Now, the first question is ‘Why is the machine on 10.3.9?’. The answer is ‘Because the person is happy with the machine on 10.3.9 and doesn’t want to upgrade’. (I have tried to explain to them the benefits of upgrading, I tried all the way through 10.4, and now 10.5 has arrived I have given up… (Amazon Link to Mac OS X 10.5).)
Anyway, Apple Mail was reporting:
‘The message from “Fred” <Fred@example.com> concerning “Interviews for the new job” has not been downloaded from the server. You need to take this account online in order to download it.’
And yes, the account was online, and happily downloading mail.
I first tried following Apple’s advice, which is basically to rebuild the mailbox index (‘Rebuild’ in the ‘Mailbox’ menu). This didn’t solve the problem…
The on a hunch I ran the ‘periodic’ scripts…
- Opened the Terminal program.
- Typed ‘sudo periodic daily’ (without the quotes), followed by my password, and let it run.
- Once ‘daily’ had run, I typed ‘sudo periodic weekly’ to run the weekly script (this took some time).
- Finally I ran the ‘sudo periodic monthly’ script.
I don’t know why, but after running the jobs, and restarting Mail, I could read all the messages again. Problem fixed… but how?
