Dear all -
I am, at the moment, (still) running procmail-3.10 under SunOS 4.X and have
been experiencing Mailtool problems of the first sort reported in
the FAQ list, i.e.:
15. My mailtool sometimes reports that it is confused about the state of
the mailbox, or I get "Couldn't unlock" errors from procmail now and then,
or sometimes it simply seems to hang just when new mail arrives.
This is a known bug in the OpenLook mailtool. It holds on to the
kernel lock on the mail-spoolfile most of the time, and releases
this lock when it shouldn't. Either ask for a bugfix from your
vendor (I'm not sure if a bugfix exists), or make sure that during
the compilation of procmail both the fcntl() and lockf() locking
methods are disabled (see config.h).
I have, in consequence, attempted to implement the workaround, i.e.
disabling (I think) the two locking methods by editing my config.h file
as indicated by the following output from diff ('<' lines are from the
original config.h).
53,54c53,55
< /*#define NO_fcntl_LOCK /* uncomment any of these three if you
*/
< /*#define NO_lockf_LOCK /* definitely do not want procmail to
make */
---
/* ff uncommented to overcome bugs in mailtool locking. rb, 12/02/96 */
#define NO_fcntl_LOCK /* uncomment any of these three if you */
#define NO_lockf_LOCK /* definitely do not want procmail to make */
This does not seem to have worked - my Mailtool still gets confused
and, strangely, cmp reports no differences between procmail* as
compiled with and without the above lines commented out.
So, I'm stuck for the moment - I've downloaded procmail 3.11 pre 4 to
see if any of the new bits would help but the FAQ still reports the
same effects of the Mailtool bug and makes the same suggestions for a
workaround.
Has anybody got any good ideas about what I should do now ?
Many TIA.
Randy Banks (randy(_at_)essex(_dot_)ac(_dot_)uk)
ESRC Research Centre on Micro-Social Change
University of Essex
Colchester
Essex
United Kingdom
CO4 3SQ
phone: 01206 873067; int: +44 1206 873067
fax: 01206 873151; int: +44 1206 873151