[Exim] failed to get write lock

Hi,

In the last week or so my exim (3.20) has started kicking out these
error in the mainlog:

2001-02-22 09:47:06 14Vxlf-0007lJ-00 Failed to get write lock for
/usr/exim/spool/db/wait-remote_smtp.lockfile: timed out

There's nothing in the paniclog and mail seems to be flowing okay.

Since I hadn't tidied the database files in a long time I thought
perhaps that might be a solution.

The db files do seem rather large (250-450K). I'm guessing they got so
big from the effectiveness of my system_filter.exim file.... ;-)

So I ran tidydb on "reject" and "retry" w/ no errors, and it said a
bunch of messages were removed, but the file sizes of the db files are
unchanged.

Then, running exim_tidydb on the wait-remote_smtp db gets me this:

# /usr/exim/bin/exim_tidydb /usr/exim/spool wait-remote_smtp
Exim wait-remote_smtp database in spool /usr/exim/spool
Failed to get write lock for
/usr/exim/spool/db/wait-remote_smtp.lockfile: timed out

Again, the filesizes of the db files are unchanged, and the error
persists in the mainlog.

I'd like to fix this so I'm wondering if anyone knows what I might do.

Thanks,
Todd