Article 124646 of comp.os.vms:
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From: Jerry Leichter <leichter@lrw.com>
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: RE: MAIL:  Bad Records
Message-ID: <9507102209.AA06073@uu3.psi.com>
Date: Mon, 10 Jul 95 18:02:59 EDT
Organization: Info-Vax<==>Comp.Os.Vms Gateway
X-Gateway-Source-Info: Mailing List
Lines: 33

	I have had many problems with users and their MAIL files.  Every so
	often, I get users who cannot delete MAIL from their accounts because
	of bad records.  Is there any solution to the problem, or some way of
	preventing it from happening?  The following is an example of the
	error the users encounter:

	%MAIL-W-WRITEERR, error writing DR1:[VILWEFFV]MAIL.MAI;1
	-RMS-F-IRC, illegal record encountered; VBN or record number = 581

Are you running VMS V6.1 by any chance?  A bug was introduced in the code
(RECLAIM.EXE) that implements CONVERT/RECLAIM, which is also called by the
MAIL PURGE/RECLAIM command.  Under certain conditions, the code will leave an
glitch in a file's organization.  For the most part, this glitch will just sit
there, a latent problem waiting to trigger.  Later, a particular action will
trigger the problem, and you'll get the IRC error.

The condition that causes the glitch and the problem is "relatively rare", but
happens to come up fairly often in mail (MAIL.MAI) files.  That's why it's
almost always spotted there.

The following patch kits correct the problem:

        CSCPAT_1181 VAXRMS01_061 Mail/Convert VAX V6.0-V6.1 ECO Summary
        CSCPAT_2062 AXPRMS01_061 AXP V6.1 Mail/Convert ECO Summary

You can get them on-line from DEC.

You can repair mail files that have the glitch in latent form by doing a
simple CONVERT - which you can get MAIL to do for you with its COMPRESS
command.  I'm not sure if this will repair the problem once it has triggered;
I suspect it will, and it's certainly worth a try.

							-- Jerry