Re: [Exim] inbox file becomes locked while downloading mail

On Wed, Mar 03, 2004 at 06:16:27PM +0200, Arunas Norvaisa wrote:

> Hello,
>
> This is my first post here and I am complete newbie, so please bear with
> me... :)
>
> I'm not even sure I'm writing to the correct mailing list! Perhaps what I'll
> write below isn't even Exim's problem...
>
> I (or, to be more exact, my hosting providers - 3 of them) have following
> problem with Exim 4.24:
>
> - my mailbox generates ~500mb/day incoming (NOT outgoing - I'm not a
> spammer, you know..) mail transfer;
>
> - while I'm downloading it (sometimes it's taking quite long time, as you
> can imagine), inbox file becomes locked (quite logical thing) and no
> new mail is delivered;
>
> - after download I experience what I really don't want to: those messages
> which were received by the server, but not delivered aren't delivered for
> a few hours, days, or even lost forever. The 'record' time between 'recei-
> ved' and 'delivery-date' headers was somewhat around 50 hours;
>
> - and yes, I've searched FAQ;
>
> - and no, I've not read O'Reilly or UIT Cambridge books :)
>
> Hosting companies are trying to help, but don't know how.
>
> Is this a known bug (well, not a bug - a MONSTER!)? And what do you can
> propose for a poor fella like me?
>
> If this isn't Exim's problem, please do answer privately, not harassing
> anybody in this nice group. If this is in the FAQ, answers like RTFM are
> accepted as well... Just tell me please where to look... :)

The problem is that your provides are using a very horrible format for
storing email. They're using the old mbox format, which needs to be
locked for writing. Tell them to switch to the Maildir format, and
install a Maildir-aware POP3 server such as courier-imap (which
includes a pop3 server).

--
Anand Buddhdev
Celtel International