RE: [cobalt-users] pop lock

["Clark E. Morgan" <prlhkr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Over the last few days alot of my users have been getting an error in MS
> Outlook when they check for mail. The error is something like "pop lock
> account busy". I have been fixing this by going to my server
> through telnet
> and going to /var/spool/mail and deleting the file .username.pop
>
> The user can them check their mail again, but this is happening
> alot now and
> i need to find out what makes it happen and how i can prevent it.
>

Stale lock files are generally the result of a process or connection
that is abruptly or abnormally terminated, denying the application
the opportunity to clean up after itself. It's comparable to all the
~something files left behind when word crashes or the way fsck runs
when a linux box shuts down without a proper kill signal. In your
case, a possible adjustment of connecion timeout settings is indicated,
either on your end or for your users. If it use to run fine, then
something has probably changed - perhaps your bandwidth aint what she
used to be - perhaps you've been hacked, though I would think they'd
get up to plenty more mischief if you had.

I've written a simple Perl script that you can run as a cron job that will
check a supplied list of directories and unlink any files older than a
specified time or a default of ten minutes. This is precisely what this is
for. Use with caution of course, plenty of caveats in the file so read
carefully.
It used to be on CPAN, though I've not updated in over a year so maybe not.
Look for "strip_lock.pl". If you can't find it there, I can probably dig up
a copy for you.

All that said, I'd check those other considerations first as they usually
indicate a wider problem.

Clark E. Morgan