Mutt, NFS and errno = 31

[João Oliveira]

Hi all,

I came across a strange situation and need some wise advice: 

  -- My Mail folder is a local MH folder on a Linux machine

  -- I am running mutt 1.5.x and everything is quite fine, up to this
  point there is nothing to report.
  
  -- I also have a NFS-mounted folder with other stuff (no Mail
  there). This is a Windows machine, and Samba manages that.

  -- A few days ago I decided to move the local Mail folder to the NFS
  area so that it is more accessible. Should be easy.

  -- Moved it there, placed a link to it, tried mutt and everything
  was ok. Really easy.

  -- Minutes later I tried to save a message in this NFS-mounted Mail
  folder and bad things happened:

     After several seconds trying to save it mutt gave "too many
     links, errno = 31" and I was surprised to see that the folder
     where I tried to save the message was FILLED with copies of the
     message to be saved, hundreds of them. I tried several times,
     same result. Operation fails, folder is awash with copies.

  -- I moved back Mail from NFS to local. Everything is fine.

  -- I moved Mail from local to NFS. Too many links again. 

  -- I blamed the MH folders for it and changed everything to Maildir.
  Same problem again: a filled folder with 1000+ copies and errno 31.

  -- I blamed the mutt version for it (1.5.x) and compiled 1.9.y. Same
  problem again.

So, I need some wisdom, a magic spell or simply herbal tea. I never
saw anything like it and other software does not produce such an error
over NFS when saving files. In any case, I did not find related
messages on the mailing list. I tought that it could be a problem with
file locking, but Maildir should prevent that. Or... ?

thanks for any help and hints,

joao batista