From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Jan 23 10:20:43 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id KAA26350 for questions-outgoing; Fri, 23 Jan 1998 10:20:43 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from super-g.inch.com (super-g.com [207.240.140.161]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id KAA26175 for ; Fri, 23 Jan 1998 10:19:34 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from spork@super-g.com) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by super-g.inch.com (8.8.8/8.8.5) with SMTP id NAA09072; Fri, 23 Jan 1998 13:19:09 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 1998 13:19:08 -0500 (EST) From: spork X-Sender: spork@super-g.inch.com To: Thomas David Rivers cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG, toasty@home.dragondata.com Subject: Re: /var/mail nfs corruption In-Reply-To: <199801231604.LAA10812@lakes.dignus.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk 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 - >