My system will be changing the alias for the shell server available to
users. All users will be using ns3 whereas the mail gets sent to ns2.
The home directory partition is nfs mounted/shared between the two
machines. However, FreeBSD doesn't support client-side NFS file locking.
My task in this matter is to give users procmail setups (we're not using
procmail as the system mail delivery agent at this point) so that if they
want to read their mail from the shell it will be copied to the home
directory.
My question here: how resiliant are the file locks that procmail puts up?
If a mail file is locked on ns2, and the directory is manipulated with a
MUA on ns3, what bad (if any) will happen?
I've done some testing here to try to be moving data on ns3 as mail is
received and stored on ns2 -- however, I cannot do this by design at the
same time. If some user loses his mail cache, however, they will be upset
and the excuse that I couldn't duplicate it won't be much of an aid.
Changing operating systems isn't really an option here.
Does anyone have any pointers that could help me here? (I am using
lockfiles in the delivery recipe, which is basically just
:0:
.INBOX
or :0c: if the user wants to POP their mail as well.
Mike Fisher
Harbor Communications