SUMMARY: Strange mail behaviour
The original question was:
Dear osf-managers,
I am having a strange problem with a users mail. It binmail cannot lockf
the /usr/spool/mail file for that user. I'm a bit mystified as to why this
is occurring. No other user seems to have that problem. I have checked the
permissions on users mail spool file and they seem correct.
Additionally, this mail spool area is NFS-mounted on other hosts. The
problem is occuring both from these remote hosts and the host on which
the spool area actuall resides.
There is a sample of output from the /var/adm/syslog.dated file mail.log.
Any help appreciated.
Steve.
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Apr 19 17:51:29 einstein binmail[16664]: cannot lockf /usr/spool/mail/pettitt
Apr 19 17:51:29 einstein sendmail[16686]: AA16530:
to=<pettitt_at_einstein.fsc.qut.edu.au>, delay=00:31:38, stat=Deferred
Apr 19 17:56:10 einstein sendmail[16745]: AA16745:
message-id=<Pine.OSF.3.91.950
419175556.16739A-100000_at_einstein.fsc.qut.edu.au>
Apr 19 17:56:10 einstein sendmail[16745]: AA16745: from=pettitt,
size=315, class=0, received from local
Apr 19 17:57:10 einstein binmail[16713]: cannot lockf /usr/spool/mail/pettitt
Apr 19 17:57:10 einstein sendmail[16736]: AA16745: to=Tony Pettitt
<pettitt_at_einstein.fsc.qut.edu.au>, delay=00:01:00, stat=Deferred
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Answer: The first solution below corrected the problem.
Thanks to all who responded!
From: Jim Belonis <belonis_at_galileo.phys.washington.edu>
I would try renaming the file away and letting sendmail (or binmail)
re-create it the way it wants. If that works, append the original file again.
From: boris_at_gore.afep.cornell.edu
File protection on the spool area?
gore.afep.cornell.edu> ls -l /usr/spool
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root system 12 Apr 10 1994 /usr/spool -> ../var/spool
gore.afep.cornell.edu> ls -l /var/spool
total 6
drwxr-xr-x 4 root system 512 Apr 10 1994 cron
drwxrwxr-x 2 uucp uucp 512 Apr 10 1994 locks
drwxr-xr-x 2 adm adm 512 Apr 13 15:23 lpd
-rw-r--r-- 1 root system 4 Apr 18 17:57 lpd.lock
drwxrwxrwt 2 root mail 512 Apr 19 09:31 mail
drwxr-xr-x 2 root system 512 Apr 19 09:31 mqueue
From: zhou_at_puffin.usmcs.maine.edu (Yizhong Zhou)
This might have been caused by the locking daemon's failure to unlock the
mail file at some point. Try first saving the original mail file and then
creating a new one with 'touch'. See if you can send mail to that user now.
From: Kevin J Walters <k.j.walters_at_lpac.ac.uk>
Hi,
We used to have a few problems with various mail programs moaning about
locking. They all went away when i actually enabled NFS locking on *all*
our machines (via nfssetup or whatever), servers and clients.
They did re-occur on one machine running OSF/1 v2.1 and it turned out
that rpc.lockd had mysteriously disappeared. You might want to make sure it
is still running.
$ ps auxww | egrep 'lockd|statd'
root 6056 0.0 0.3 1.30M 288K pd S + 11:41:09 0:00.02 egrep lockd|statd
root 11536 0.0 0.0 1.44M 0K pe IW Apr 07 0:00.04 /usr/sbin/rpc.statd
root 11538 0.0 0.0 1.67M 40K pe I Apr 07 0:00.35 /usr/sbin/rpc.lockd
From: William Gianopoulos {84718} <wag_at_swl.msd.ray.com>
We have had the same problem. The user in question is usually someone who
normally reads mail on an Ultrix workstation using Elm. There is supposedly
a problem with fcntl style locking under Ultrix which causes locks to not
be released if the locking process is killed. This is documented in the
sendmail 8.6.12 release materials. I would suggest that if the user in
question normally uses an Ultrix workstation, you check what mail reader
they are using and rebuild it to use only flock and file locking.
To get around the situation you have now, I would use the mv command to
rename the locked mail file, and then cp it back to the original name.
Make sure the resulting file has the same permissions, and you should be
able to deliver mail again.
From: Hellebo Knut <bgk1142_at_bggfu2.nho.hydro.com>
Subject: Re: Strange mail behaviour
Check the permissions on the mailprograms (sendmail/binmail etc.). What
happens if you do a 'mv' on the old mailfile and then try to send another
mail to the user ?
Are there any locks left in /etc/sm.bak ?
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Steve Imber e-mail: S.Imber_at_qut.edu.au
_--_|\ Systems Administrator phone: +61 7 8645193
/ QUT School of Mathematics fax: +61 7 8642310
\_.--._/ Queensland University of Technology
v Box 2434 Brisbane 4001 AUSTRALIA
Received on Thu Apr 27 1995 - 20:12:22 NZST