Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Thu, 30 Oct 1997 19:12:37 -0800 (PST)
From:      Tom <tom@sdf.com>
To:        Joe McGuckin <joe@via.net>
Cc:        hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Mail servers & NFS locking?
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.3.95q.971030190509.8546C-100000@misery.sdf.com>
In-Reply-To: <199710302005.MAA27740@monk.via.net>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help

On Thu, 30 Oct 1997, Joe McGuckin wrote:

> I want to have a seperate machine as a sendmail/pop email server. 
> I've heard that on some OS's this can scramble mailboxes if NFS locking 
> doesn't work.
> 
> For FreeBSD, what is the preferred method to do this? Can I just NFS mount
> the mail directory on the user machines? Does NFS locking work?

  The prefered way is IMAP.  I've setup a site with a dedicated mailbox
server that is completely closed (13,000 mailboxes), with the only access
via POP and IMAP.  This limits client selection a bit, but client
support is growing.  Way better than messing about with NFS and standard
UNIX bezerk mailboxes.

  The worst about mounting /var/mail elsewhere is not NFS locking (which
doesn't work right in FreeBSD, however dotlocking is ok), but
making sure all the clients are using the correct locking mechanism.  If
you don't, someones going to lose mail.  A good example is an NFS mount
scenario where flock() isn't effective (ex. FreeBSD), and the client
doesn't get a dotlock, and doesn't notice that something else has a
dotlock... oops.

> Thanks!
> 
> Joe

Tom




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.BSF.3.95q.971030190509.8546C-100000>