Date: Fri, 23 Jan 1998 11:04:49 -0500 (EST) From: Thomas David Rivers <rivers@dignus.com> To: questions@FreeBSD.ORG, toasty@home.dragondata.com Subject: Re: /var/mail nfs corruption Message-ID: <199801231604.LAA10812@lakes.dignus.com>
next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> > > I operate a rather busy shell account service... Big enough that we have > multiple shell machines. > > /var/mail is exported on our main NFS server to all the shell servers. > > Users keep complaining that their mail files are getting really corrupted > badly, and that they are losing mail. > > If they use elm/pine on the machine that actually receives the incoming > mail, they're fine, but if they use elm/pine on a machine with /var/mail > mounted, they lose things like crazy. > > > Am I missing a step here, or is this just normal for dealing with nfs? > > Kevin > Because FreeBSD doesn't have a working lockd - locking files over NFS doesn't work. So - if your user is rewriting the mail file on one machine, while sendmail tries to add to the end from another machine - you get corrupted mail files. Also - I've noticed a problem with local mail, which I suspect to be some mail process not properly locking the file. If you have a large mail file, and read some of the messages; and sendmail tries to append to the mailfile - the new mail is lost (this is using 'mail', I don't know if elm/pine would suffer the same symptoms.) A different approach would be to assign users particular machines; and only have them deal with their mail on that machine. Then, let them log into any machine and have their .profile rlogin them into the machine you'd like them to have.. - Dave Rivers -
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199801231604.LAA10812>