[tpop3d-discuss] Lockfile problems..

James Gurney james at globalmegacorp.org
Mon, 01 Dec 2003 16:33:56 -0800


This morning in my spool folder, I noticed the following files:

-r--r-----    1 dean     mail            0 Dec  1 02:28 
dean.18998.1070274490.devious
-r--r-----    1 dean     mail            0 Dec  1 02:28 
dean.18998.1070274492.devious
-r--r-----    1 dean     mail            0 Dec  1 02:28 
dean.18998.1070274494.devious
-r--r-----    1 dean     mail            0 Dec  1 02:28 
dean.18998.1070274496.devious

The syslog contains:

Dec  1 02:28:10 devious tpop3d[18998]: dotfile_lock(/var/mail/dean): 
unable to write PID to hitching post: No space left on device
Dec  1 02:28:16 devious last message repeated 3 times
Dec  1 02:28:18 devious tpop3d[18998]: mailspool_new_from_file: failed 
to lock /var/mail/dean: No space left on device
Dec  1 02:28:18 devious tpop3d[18998]: dotfile_unlock(/var/mail/dean): 
open: No such file or directory

As far as I can tell, /var has not run out of space at any point during 
the night (not unless 4GB of data mysteriously appeared and disappeared 
in the space of 5 minutes), and I can't see any reason why I might have 
run out of file descriptors (which is the only other thing I've seen 
cause the 'no space left on device' errors in the past).

The user 'dean' has subsequently had no problems checking his mail, and 
there have been no further errors in the log, so I'm not too worried, 
but I'm interested if anyone knows what may have caused this.

I'm running tpop3d 1.5.2, configured as follows:

./configure --enable-auth-passwd --disable-auth-pam 
--enable-shadow-passwords --enable-mbox-bsd --enable-tls

Ideas?

Cheers,

James