help~!!!! showing me "MailBox in use"

[garyhui]

i cannot access my mailbox properly

the system show me "Mailbox in use"

what's wrong in the system ?

[DirectAdmin Support]

Hello,

That would probably mean that either someone else is using your account while you are trying to read mail, or vm-pop3d died half way through the read... but I've never heard that happen before.

I'll assume it creates a lock file, so to fix the problem, you'd just have to delete it:

system email:
rm /var/spool/mail/username.lock

virtual email:
rm /var/spool/virtual/domain.com/username.lock

John

[garyhui]

Um..this problem occurs quite frequently in my server.
i'm very sure only 1 people connecting to the mailbox all the time.

why the *.lock file cannot be removed properly ?

is that good if i write a cron job to auto clean these *.lock files

[nobaloney]

The .lock file will appear as a semaphore when you log in to read your email.

It should disappear immediately on a proper logout, but in any event it errors out after some time period if there's no one reading the mail spool file.

The problem with creating a cronjob will be that then the file could be unlocked while someone is still reading it.

In which case any mail that comes in while the mailbox is being read will either disappear entirely (probably) or else corrupt the file (possibly).

Jeff

[kanomen]

if I want to check my emails by 10 pcs what I need to do ?

[DirectAdmin Support]

Hello,

Your best bet would be to install dovecot.
It doesn't lock the entire mailbox and allows multiple simultaneous logins. Not to mention everything in general is much faster because it uses Maildir and not mbox.

http://www.directadmin.com/features.php?id=590

John

[dthwc]

The .lock file will appear as a semaphore when you log in to read your email.

It should disappear immediately on a proper logout, but in any event it errors out after some time period if there's no one reading the mail spool file.

The problem with creating a cronjob will be that then the file could be unlocked while someone is still reading it.

In which case any mail that comes in while the mailbox is being read will either disappear entirely (probably) or else corrupt the file (possibly).

Jeff

I am having an issue on my host in regards to this lock file, my client is using
a mobile to access emails and also his desktop mail client using the same username and password (account).

The proper logout method is not working correctly and the .lock file has to be manually removed, but then whilst using the service it logs you out and locks you out.

So what options do I have, get dovecat running?

Thanks
Bruno

[nobaloney]

So what options do I have, get dovecat running?
How did you ever guess :)?

Jeff