Re: [cobalt-users] Passwords change by themselves?

[John Rood <john@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 20 Jul 2000 WayneB6094@xxxxxxx wrote:

> In a message dated 7/19/00 1:11:30 PM US Mountain Standard Time, 
> techadmin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
> 
> > I've run into this a few times myself. I've resolved the probelm by simply
> >  hitting the "confirm modify" button without even retyping the passwords. I
> >  myself don't have a clue as to what is causing the problem or why this 
> would
> >  work without retyping the password. Possibly some of you more savy Linux
> >  people out there on the list will become enlightened with this new
> >  information. 
> 
> Next time this happens, telnet into the machine, go to /home/spool/mail, and 
> type "ls -la".  See if there are any files listed in the format 
> ".username.pop" (I think that's what the format is, off the top of my head).  
> They would be shown at the top of the file list.  If a file like that does 
> exist for the user that is having trouble, that file is "locking" the 
> mailbox.  Delete that file, and the user should again be able to access their 
> mailbox.

Concerning these .username.pop files, these are temporary copies of a
user's mailbox. These copies are made to protect the real mailbox from
getting corrupted if a user would use a local MUA and a popclient
simultaniously. This is the default action when qpopper runs in 'safe
dummy mode'. If you expect your users won't use a lozal MUA (like pine or
elm) on the cobalt itself, you can switch qpopper to server mode, so it
doesn't create copies of the mailboxes. This way you get rid of these
locks and it speeds things up (no copies have to be made). This is fairly
simple to setup. Just edit your /etc/inetd.conf and look for the line
staring with pop-3. Add -S to in.qpopper, so 

pop-3   stream  tcp     nowait  root    /usr/sbin/tcpd in.qpopper

looks like

pop-3   stream  tcp     nowait  root    /usr/sbin/tcpd in.qpopper -S

save the file and do a killall -HUP inetd and there's your bleeding
(um, right) fast popdaemon :)

John

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John C. Rood
UNIX programmer/Database developer/System administrator
SFARC Networks, The Netherlands - http://www.sfarc.net