Date: Fri, 23 Jan 1998 13:19:08 -0500 (EST) From: spork <spork@super-g.com> To: Thomas David Rivers <rivers@dignus.com> Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG, toasty@home.dragondata.com Subject: Re: /var/mail nfs corruption Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980123131601.9067A-100000@super-g.inch.com> In-Reply-To: <199801231604.LAA10812@lakes.dignus.com>
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Procmail seems to handle this situation much better than mail.local.
Haven't lost mail yet using procmail as the local delivery agent. This is
going on about a year and a half of constant use. The only way I can
trash a mail file is if a user is in the shell running a mail program
while popping in. We try to discourage this. The damage is never too
bad, just a missing "F" in the very first "From" line...
Charles Sprickman
spork@super-g.com
----
"I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man
Just a mortal with potential of a superman
I'm living on" -DB
On Fri, 23 Jan 1998, Thomas David Rivers wrote:
> >
> >
> > 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 -
>
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