I think it turned out to be simpler than I thought.

I'll let this run tonight and make sure it's working right. Theo, if you could
take a look at my commit just to make sure I'm not way off the mark, that'd be
great.

duncf@gold:~/svn/spamassassin$ svn commit
Sending        lib/Mail/SpamAssassin/Message.pm
Transmitting file data .
Committed revision 471136.

Nope. still broken :-(

Hrm.  When the Message::Node objects go away, the file references should go
away, thereby closing the files.  There shouldn't need to be an explicit 'close'.

For a temporary work-around, you can use --restart.

have you tried using "lsof -p PID" to find out what fds are open, halfway
through the mass-check?

(easy option: fix that "cannot write" message to call "system lsof -p $$" ;)

There's a whole bunch of temp files as created by M:SA:Util::secure_tmpfile().
The file is deleted, so there's (AFAIK) no way of reading their contents.

Since I'm the only one that seems to experience this, here's my perl info:

duncf@gold:~$ perl -V
Summary of my perl5 (revision 5 version 8 subversion 8) configuration:
  Platform:
    osname=linux, osvers=2.6.15-1-686, archname=i486-linux-gnu-thread-multi
    uname='linux ulises 2.6.15-1-686 #2 mon mar 6 15:27:08 utc 2006 i686 gnulinux '
    config_args='-Dusethreads -Duselargefiles -Dccflags=-DDEBIAN
-Dcccdlflags=-fPIC -Darchname=i486-linux-gnu -Dprefix=/usr
-Dprivlib=/usr/share/perl/5.8 -Darchlib=/usr/lib/perl/5.8 -Dvendorprefix=/usr
-Dvendorlib=/usr/share/perl5 -Dvendorarch=/usr/lib/perl5 -Dsiteprefix=/usr/local
-Dsitelib=/usr/local/share/perl/5.8.8 -Dsitearch=/usr/local/lib/perl/5.8.8
-Dman1dir=/usr/share/man/man1 -Dman3dir=/usr/share/man/man3
-Dsiteman1dir=/usr/local/man/man1 -Dsiteman3dir=/usr/local/man/man3 -Dman1ext=1
-Dman3ext=3perl -Dpager=/usr/bin/sensible-pager -Uafs -Ud_csh -Uusesfio -Uusenm
-Duseshrplib -Dlibperl=libperl.so.5.8.8 -Dd_dosuid -des'
    hint=recommended, useposix=true, d_sigaction=define
    usethreads=define use5005threads=undef useithreads=define usemultiplicity=define
    useperlio=define d_sfio=undef uselargefiles=define usesocks=undef
    use64bitint=undef use64bitall=undef uselongdouble=undef
    usemymalloc=n, bincompat5005=undef
  Compiler:
    cc='cc', ccflags ='-D_REENTRANT -D_GNU_SOURCE -DTHREADS_HAVE_PIDS -DDEBIAN
-fno-strict-aliasing -pipe -I/usr/local/include -D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE
-D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64',
    optimize='-O2',
    cppflags='-D_REENTRANT -D_GNU_SOURCE -DTHREADS_HAVE_PIDS -DDEBIAN
-fno-strict-aliasing -pipe -I/usr/local/include'
    ccversion='', gccversion='4.1.2 20060729 (prerelease) (Debian 4.1.1-10)',
gccosandvers=''
    intsize=4, longsize=4, ptrsize=4, doublesize=8, byteorder=1234
    d_longlong=define, longlongsize=8, d_longdbl=define, longdblsize=12
    ivtype='long', ivsize=4, nvtype='double', nvsize=8, Off_t='off_t', lseeksize=8
    alignbytes=4, prototype=define
  Linker and Libraries:
    ld='cc', ldflags =' -L/usr/local/lib'
    libpth=/usr/local/lib /lib /usr/lib
    libs=-lgdbm -lgdbm_compat -ldb -ldl -lm -lpthread -lc -lcrypt
    perllibs=-ldl -lm -lpthread -lc -lcrypt
    libc=/lib/libc-2.3.6.so, so=so, useshrplib=true, libperl=libperl.so.5.8.8
    gnulibc_version='2.3.6'
  Dynamic Linking:
    dlsrc=dl_dlopen.xs, dlext=so, d_dlsymun=undef, ccdlflags='-Wl,-E'
    cccdlflags='-fPIC', lddlflags='-shared -L/usr/local/lib'


Characteristics of this binary (from libperl):
  Compile-time options: MULTIPLICITY PERL_IMPLICIT_CONTEXT
                        PERL_MALLOC_WRAP THREADS_HAVE_PIDS USE_ITHREADS
                        USE_LARGE_FILES USE_PERLIO USE_REENTRANT_API
  Built under linux
  Compiled at Aug  6 2006 15:35:16
  @INC:
    /etc/perl
    /usr/local/lib/perl/5.8.8
    /usr/local/share/perl/5.8.8
    /usr/lib/perl5
    /usr/share/perl5
    /usr/lib/perl/5.8
    /usr/share/perl/5.8
    /usr/local/lib/site_perl
    /usr/local/lib/perl/5.8.7
    /usr/local/share/perl/5.8.7
    /usr/local/lib/perl/5.8.4
    /usr/local/share/perl/5.8.4
    /usr/local/lib/perl/5.8.0
    /usr/local/share/perl/5.8.0
    .

I tried debugging this more to no avail. My best guess is the reference isn't
getting deleted somewhere OR my version of perl has a bug and that's causing it
to not delete the reference.

Duncan -- can you post a simple test case to reproduce this?  (obviously my
mass-check is not producing this error, so it's not a widespread bug.)

fwiw, you can debug perl garbage collection using something like

sub DESTROY { warn "JMD destroyed $_[0]"; }

in theory this is fixed due to the explicit finish() destruction put back into
trunk.

Yep, this is fixed.