On Wed, 25 Feb 1998, Brad Mohning wrote:
[Single-line paragraph reformatted]
> Our exim server is a Sun Ultra 1/170 running Solaris 2.5.1. Our new
fileserver is an Auspex running 1.9.1Z1 (a SunOS 4.1.4 variant). The
end users read their mail with Sun's mailtool. The problem is that if a
user has mailtool running, exim can't get a file lock on the mail file
and defers delivery. If the user exits mailtool, exim can deliver just
fine.
The attached information (from another Exim user) may be of help.
--
Philip Hazel University Computing Service,
ph10@??? New Museums Site, Cambridge CB2 3QG,
P.Hazel@??? England. Phone: +44 1223 334714
----------------------------------------------------------------------
This is one for the exim FAQ if ever there was!
I started poking about in the properties of dtmail and mailtool because
I couldn't understand why dtmail worked and mailtool didn't as I know that
much of the code between the two is the same. It turns out
that under the 'Expert' settings of mailtool is a option to turn on the
option: 'Use network aware mail file locking'.
By default dtmail had this set, mailtool didn't. If you set it for mailtool,
hey presto! It all works.
The help info on dtmail has this to say about this option:
Mailer tries to prevent two different instances of itself from opening the
same mail file at the same time through a technique that detects this
access when both instances of Mailer and the file are all on the same
machine.
A network-aware mail file locking protocol is available that uses ToolTalk
to coordinate instances of Mailer running from more than one machine, or
mail files accessed over the network.
Mailer can only change this option when first opening a mail file. If you
change this option when a mail file is open, you are given three choices:
However, this can't be the whole story because it must also force mailtool
not to use fcntl locking.
It's still a bit of a mystery to me why we never had this problem with
sendmail, unless sendmail relies solely on the .lock file. Which makes me
feel even better about moving to a MTA that's a bit more robust!
--
*** Exim information can be found at
http://www.exim.org/ ***
