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qpopper-request | 1 Mar 2006 09:01
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Qpopper Monthly Help File

         M O N T H L Y   Q P O P P E R   L I S T   H E L P

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Virtually,
The List Server Admin <listmaster <at> lists.pensive.org>
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Lisa Casey | 1 Mar 2006 15:59

Puzzling pop lock files

Hi,

I had a mail server crash on Monday of this week so I hurriedly set up
another FreeBSD box I have to accept email in place of the crashed machine.
The new box  already had Sendmail installed but didn't have a POP3 server so
I installed Qpopper 4.0.5 from the ports.

I've been using Qpopper for several years now on various machines, I have
another mail server now with Qpopper 4.0.4 currently on it.

In the past, I've had occasional problems with pop lock files that, for one
reason or another, didn't want  to go away. And of course, when a customer
attempts to pop mail  while a pop lock is present for his mailbox the
customer gets a "password error" on his end and on our end I get logged the
message "Is another session active?".  This is just the way it's always
worked and it's my understanding that this is  how it's supposed to work
:-)

That's why I'm perplexed at what I see on this new box I set up on Monday.
Pop locks are staying around, but they are NOT preventing anyone from being
able to pop their mail.  There are  some pop locks  on this machine now from
Monday, yet these customers are happily popping their mail today.

Why is this? I must of overlooked something perhaps in my haste to  get this
setup, but it's been awhile since I've set up a new Qpopper and I don't know
what I've overlooked.

Thanks,

Lisa Casey
(Continue reading)

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Randall Gellens | 2 Mar 2006 23:30

Re: Puzzling pop lock files

At 9:59 AM -0500 3/1/06, Lisa Casey wrote:

>  Hi,
>
>  I had a mail server crash on Monday of this week so I hurriedly set up
>  another FreeBSD box I have to accept email in place of the crashed machine.
>  The new box  already had Sendmail installed but didn't have a POP3 server so
>  I installed Qpopper 4.0.5 from the ports.
>
>  I've been using Qpopper for several years now on various machines, I have
>  another mail server now with Qpopper 4.0.4 currently on it.

The current version is 4.0.8.  Note that there was a fix in 4.0.6 
that might resolve the problem with pop locks you were having:

	Worked around problem on some systems causing SIGALRM to be masked,
      leaving hung pop processes which should have timed out waiting
      for a command from the client.

So I'd suggest upgrading to 4.0.8.

>
>  In the past, I've had occasional problems with pop lock files that, for one
>  reason or another, didn't want  to go away. And of course, when a customer
>  attempts to pop mail  while a pop lock is present for his mailbox the
>  customer gets a "password error" on his end and on our end I get logged the
>  message "Is another session active?".  This is just the way it's always
>  worked and it's my understanding that this is  how it's supposed to work
>  :-)
(Continue reading)

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Randall Gellens | 3 Mar 2006 00:28

Re: Puzzling pop lock files

At 9:59 AM -0500 3/1/06, Lisa Casey wrote:

>  And of course, when a customer
>  attempts to pop mail  while a pop lock is present for his mailbox the
>  customer gets a "password error" on his end

I forgot to mention in my previous reply that Qpopper supports the 
RESP-CODES and AUTH-RESP-CODE extensions, which have been around for 
some years now.  These extensions allow the client to unambiguously 
determine which errors during or after authentication are in fact 
user credential errors and which are not.  Thus, the client can avoid 
prompting for the password unless it is likely to help.

The fact that more clients don't support this is unfortunate, 
especially given how little work it is likely to be for the client 
vendor.

--

-- 
Randall Gellens
Opinions are personal;    facts are suspect;    I speak for myself only
-------------- Randomly-selected tag: ---------------
In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People,
with their wisdom and unwisdom. --Thomas Carlyle, _Past and Present_
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Lisa Casey | 3 Mar 2006 22:22

Re: Puzzling pop lock files

Hi Randall (and all),

I uninstalled qpopper 4.0.5 and installed qpopper 4.0.8 today. It's working 
fine. You asked me to post to the list to let you (and others) know if it 
solved my problem. To refresh everyone's memory, I'll quote what  I 
originally posted as being my problem:

> I had a mail server crash on Monday of this week so I hurriedly set up
> another FreeBSD box I have to accept email in place of the crashed 
> machine.
> The new box  already had Sendmail installed but didn't have a POP3 server 
> so
> I installed Qpopper 4.0.5 from the ports.
>
> In the past, I've had occasional problems with pop lock files that, for 
> one
> reason or another, didn't want  to go away. And of course, when a customer
> attempts to pop mail  while a pop lock is present for his mailbox the
> customer gets a "password error" on his end and on our end I get logged 
> the
> message "Is another session active?".  This is just the way it's always
> worked and it's my understanding that this is  how it's supposed to work
> :-)
>
> That's why I'm perplexed at what I see on this new box I set up on Monday.
> Pop locks are staying around, but they are NOT preventing anyone from 
> being
> able to pop their mail.  There are  some pop locks  on this machine now 
> from
> Monday, yet these customers are happily popping their mail today.
(Continue reading)

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Ken A | 4 Mar 2006 01:28
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Re: Puzzling pop lock files

You can also use the stats feature of qpopper to log stuff like this to 
the pop log:

popper[20355]: Stats: username 0 0 23 370462 x.x.x.x x.x.x.x

The stats will tell you a lot more:

messages retrieved
bytes retrieved
messages left
bytes left

See ./configure --help or the qpopper manual.

Ken
Pacific.Net

Lisa Casey wrote:
> Hi Randall (and all),
> 
> I uninstalled qpopper 4.0.5 and installed qpopper 4.0.8 today. It's 
> working fine. You asked me to post to the list to let you (and others) 
> know if it solved my problem. To refresh everyone's memory, I'll quote 
> what  I originally posted as being my problem:
> 
> 
>> I had a mail server crash on Monday of this week so I hurriedly set up
>> another FreeBSD box I have to accept email in place of the crashed 
>> machine.
>> The new box  already had Sendmail installed but didn't have a POP3
(Continue reading)

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Randall Gellens | 4 Mar 2006 01:48

Re: Puzzling pop lock files

Hi Lisa,

You did a good job of summarizing the situation.  Let me try and fill 
in a few details, hopefully not making it too confusing.

There are two main kinds of locks that Qpopper uses (with some 
potential variances within them):

To make sure that only one process at a time is modifying the mail 
spool, a maillock is held only during the start and end of the 
session.  Qpopper obtains a maillock on the spool, copies the spool 
to the temp drop, zeroes the spool, and releases the maillock.  Local 
delivery agents delay mail delivery while the maillock is held.

At the end of the session, Qpopper again obtains a maillock on the 
spool, appends any mail that arrived during the session to the temp 
drop, copies the temp drop to the spool, removes or zeroes the temp 
drop, and releases the maillock.

Maillocks need to be interoperable between any program that accesses 
the spool.  It wouldn't be good if Qpopper used one method while the 
local delivery agent used another.  Not to mention all the other 
programs that could be used to modify the spool.  Qpopper by default 
uses the ".lock" technique, which is compatible with maillock(3) as 
implemented on many platforms.

While the session is in use, Qpopper holds an advisory lock on the 
temp drop.  The advisory lock is only needed to prevent multiple POP 
sessions from altering the temp drop.
(Continue reading)

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Randall Gellens | 8 Mar 2006 03:06

Qpopper 4.0.9a1 available -- fixes crash

Qpopper 4.0.9a1 is available at 
<ftp://ftp.qualcomm.com/eudora/servers/unix/popper/beta/≥.

The full list of changes from one release to the next is on the FTP 
site, at <ftp://ftp.qualcomm.com/eudora/servers/unix/popper/Changes>.

Note that this release fixes a potential crash (from authenticated 
users).  All users of Qpopper are encouraged to upgrade to this 
release.

Changes from 4.0.8 to 4.0.9b1:
-----------------------------
  1.  Fix crash if too many MDEF commands entered.
--

-- 
Randall Gellens
Opinions are personal;    facts are suspect;    I speak for myself only
-------------- Randomly-selected tag: ---------------
Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.
                                                         --Beckett
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Hugh Sasse | 9 Mar 2006 12:52
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Large spool mboxes => slow?

We have several people who POP their mail fairly frequently, but
they leave mail on the server.  These large files seem to be the
main thing impacting the performance of the mail server.  Qpopper
has no quota options as such, and some of the policy controls are
dependent on being sure how the client interacts with the serveer,
and I am not familiar with all the clients people use.
The OS (Solaris9) has quotas for disks, but with this being for mail
I'm presently unsure as to how that will impact on users.
So, I have reached the conclusion that the best thing I can do to
improve performance is to use the --enable-temp-drop-dir and point
it to a different partition from /var/spool/mail so that disk seeks
on both partitions may occur in parallel.  Does this sound like a
useful thing to do?  What if they are on different slices of the same
disk -- would that make things worse (further for the heads to seek)? 

Filesystem            kbytes    used   avail capacity  Mounted on
/dev/dsk/c0t0d0s7    10525500 9733158  687087    94%    /export/home
/dev/dsk/c0t0d0s3    4030014  373130 3616584    10%    /var

Is there anything else I can do to qpopper that will help?

Getting users to change their behaviour is another story altogether,
of course :-)

        Hugh
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Gregory Hicks | 9 Mar 2006 14:40
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Re: Large spool mboxes => slow?

> Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2006 11:52:56 +0000 (WET)
> From: Hugh Sasse <hgs <at> dmu.ac.uk>
> To: Subscribers of Qpopper <qpopper <at> lists.pensive.org>
> X-DMU-MailScanner-Information: Please contact the ISP for more 
information
> X-DMU-MailScanner: Found to be clean
> Subject: Large spool mboxes => slow?
> 
> We have several people who POP their mail fairly frequently, but
> they leave mail on the server.  These large files seem to be the
> main thing impacting the performance of the mail server.  Qpopper
> has no quota options as such, and some of the policy controls are
> dependent on being sure how the client interacts with the serveer,
> and I am not familiar with all the clients people use.
> The OS (Solaris9) has quotas for disks, but with this being for mail
> I'm presently unsure as to how that will impact on users.
> So, I have reached the conclusion that the best thing I can do to
> improve performance is to use the --enable-temp-drop-dir and point
> it to a different partition from /var/spool/mail so that disk seeks
> on both partitions may occur in parallel.  Does this sound like a

Point to different spindles on different I/O channels.  You have 
c0t0d0s6.  Use c1t0d0s6 for the temp-drop-dir.  At a minimum, point to 
different spindles.

any POP3 daemon is going to have problem is the spool gets too large.

Also enable server mode.  enable caching of temp dir

> useful thing to do?  What if they are on different slices of the same
(Continue reading)

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