On Thu, 3 Oct 2002, Brian L. MacDonald wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> Qpopper 4.0.4 server mode
> Mail spool on NetApp filer via NFS
>

reading mboxes over NFS is always a bad idea.
really the only circumstance where you can use mail over nfs reliably is
if you use Maildir delivery instead of mbox.

-Tony
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Anthony J. Biacco                            Network Administrator/Engineer
[EMAIL PROTECTED]              http://www.asteroid-b612.org

             "Every day should be a good day to die"   -DJM
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> 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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