Hello all,

Qpopper 4.0.4 server mode
Mail spool on NetApp filer via NFS

We have been having a problem that was a bear to track down.

When we use server mode we are loosing mail.  I know about the MDA and MUA
issues and we are only using MDA for these accounts.  If we turn on full
debugging what we are seeing happen is that when a new message is delivered
to the mail spool while a qpopper session is active qpopper at times does
not realize that the mail spool has been appended and truncates the mail
spool without first copying any undeleted messages.

If our troubleshooting is correct, the reason this is happening is that when
pop_updt.c does a fstat it is seeing the same filesize as when the session
started.

The reason for the fstat not being updated from the time when the session
started is related to the NetApp.  The NetApp caches writes to the
filesystem.  When you perform a fstat on a file you are getting the stat of
the file that is on the physical disk which does not include any writes that
have occurred that have been cached but not written to disk.  The max amount
of time that the write can be cached (and qpopper get an invalid fstat) is
30 sec. (I think-trying to verify).

Questions:
1.  Has anyone encountered this problem and if so how have you got around
it?

2.  Has anyone attempted or thought of a way to modify qpopper to look at
the spool file rather than doing an fstat?

3.  Has anyone found a way to configure the NetApp to have fstat include
cached writes?

4.  Does anyone have any other thoughts as to how to correct this problem?

TIA!

Brian
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

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