On Thu, 13 Jun 1996, Rob Leslie wrote: > > (2) Sendmail: > > Something about file-locking conventions. Does the debian > > sendmail package obey this? I remember something unconventional > > about the debian package. > > The newest sendmail packages have been compiled to use flock() file locking as > recommended by the kernel notes.
One site I installed debian on uses sendmail. There are several dial in users, mostly using pop3d to retrieve their mail. Under some circumstances (*see below), pop3d hangs - leaving a large temporary file in /tmp and also leaving the user's mail file locked. The mailbox stays locked until the pop3d process is killed. Meanwhile mail can not be delivered to that user. As this is on a small hobbyist/bbs type system, that might be a day or so before the admin notices the problem. Not good. Anyone out there seen anything like this? Got a fix for it? * circumstances are unknown at this stage - appears to be related to size of mailbox file but doesn't happen often enough for a common pattern to emerge. As far as I know, it's only happened when a user was downloading a mail file which contained one or more large uuencoded files. My guess is that it's an obscure bug in pop3d triggered by either a) mailbox file too large for it to cope with or b) user terminating the mail download too early/at the wrong moment because they're getting bored waiting or c) something about some uuencoded files is confusing the hell out of pop3d. Craig
