Re: Puzzling pop lock files

You can also use the stats feature of qpopper to log stuff like this to 
the pop log:

popper[20355]: Stats: username 0 0 23 370462 x.x.x.x x.x.x.x

The stats will tell you a lot more:

messages retrieved
bytes retrieved
messages left
bytes left

See ./configure --help or the qpopper manual.

Ken
Pacific.Net

Lisa Casey wrote:
> Hi Randall (and all),
> 
> I uninstalled qpopper 4.0.5 and installed qpopper 4.0.8 today. It's 
> working fine. You asked me to post to the list to let you (and others) 
> know if it solved my problem. To refresh everyone's memory, I'll quote 
> what  I originally posted as being my problem:
> 
> 
>> I had a mail server crash on Monday of this week so I hurriedly set up
>> another FreeBSD box I have to accept email in place of the crashed 
>> machine.
>> The new box  already had Sendmail installed but didn't have a POP3 
>> server so
>> I installed Qpopper 4.0.5 from the ports.
>>
>> In the past, I've had occasional problems with pop lock files that, 
>> for one
>> reason or another, didn't want  to go away. And of course, when a 
>> customer
>> attempts to pop mail  while a pop lock is present for his mailbox the
>> customer gets a "password error" on his end and on our end I get 
>> logged the
>> message "Is another session active?".  This is just the way it's always
>> worked and it's my understanding that this is  how it's supposed to work
>> :-)
>>
>> That's why I'm perplexed at what I see on this new box I set up on 
>> Monday.
>> Pop locks are staying around, but they are NOT preventing anyone from 
>> being
>> able to pop their mail.  There are  some pop locks  on this machine 
>> now from
>> Monday, yet these customers are happily popping their mail today.
>>
>> Why is this? I must of overlooked something perhaps in my haste to  
>> get this
>> setup, but it's been awhile since I've set up a new Qpopper and I 
>> don't know
>> what I've overlooked.
> 
> I've now found that what I thought of as a "problem" is not a problem at 
> all but a feature. And a quite useful one at that. The lock files I was 
> seeing (.username.pop) files at the top of /var/mail must be the temp 
> drop files (as you Randall suggested) and not lock files at all which is 
> what I thought they were. That's why customers with a .username.pop file 
> were still able to pop mail despite the presence of these files. Which 
> brings up a question: what does a pop lock look like as opposed to a 
> temp drop? Let me show an example (which is where my confusion stems from):
> 
> I have another mail server running Sendmail/Qpopper on Red Hat linux. 
> When I set this one up I did not pass --enable-keep-temp-drop as a 
> configuration option because I was unaware of this particular option. 
> Right  now a customer is popping mail. If I do a ls -al on /var/mail, I 
> see this while the customer is popping:
> 
> -rw-rw----    1 gwilson  mail            0 Mar  3 15:57 gwilson
> -rw-rw----    1 gwilson  mail       115869 Mar  3 15:57 .gwilson.pop
> 
> Are you saying that the .gwilson.pop file is a temp drop as opposed to a 
> pop lock? Lets suppose gwilson is using Outlook Express (as a vast 
> majority of my customers do). Lets also suppose that, for whatever 
> reason, gwilson's pop session was aborted prematurely. My experience 
> over the past few years is that in such a scenario the .gwilson.pop file 
> is likely to hang around for 10 to 15 minutes and until this file goes 
> away if gwilson attempts to pop mail again on his end he gets what 
> appears to him to be a password error, on my end I get logged:
> 
> Mar  3 16:12:09 Raydeus-Dee popper[11648]: gwilson at 64.xx.xx.xx 
> (64.xx.xx.xx): -ERR [IN-USE] /var/mail/.gwilson.pop lock busy!  Is 
> another session active? (11)
> 
> This happens whenever there exists a gwilson file (the mailbox) and a 
> .gwilson.pop file simultaneously.  I have noticed the following in 
> /var/mail from time to time:
> 
> 
> -rw-------    1 hostmast mail     683814 Mar  1 10:02 hostmaster
> -rw-------    1 hostmast mail           16 Mar  3 15:57 hostmaster.lock
> -rw-rw----    1 hostmast mail     268934 Mar  3 15:58 .hostmaster.pop
> 
> I don't get to see this often because when someone first starts to pop 
> mail these three files exist together only very briefly, then there is 
> just the username and the .username.pop file until the pop3 session is 
> over. So the username.lock file is the pop lock whereas the 
> .username.pop file is a temp drop? And if I had used 
> --enable-keep-temp-drop when I set up this qpopper the .username.pop 
> files would not go away but would persist as  zero byte files thus 
> allowing me to see when this user last popped his mail? (Quite useful, I 
> had been using ls -lut to determine this which may or may not be a very 
> accurate way of doing it).
> 
> So if I see a .username.pop file that is something other than zero byte 
> size, that user is actively popping mail and if for whatever reason 
> attempts to pop it again while that file is there, there will be an 
> error, but if a .username.pop file of zero byte size is present the user 
> can pop his mail ok?  My server logs this error as ERR [IN-USE] 
> /var/mail/.gwilson.pop lock busy! which is why I thought the 
> .username.pop files were the pop locks.
> 
> Am I getting a correct understanding of how this all works now?
> 
> Thanks so much.
> 
> Lisa Casey
> 
>