Re: converting from qpopper

[Sergey Poznyakoff]

Quoting Sam Roberts <address@hidden>, who wrote:
> How do MTAs usually deliver mail to the local spool on reception via
> smtp?
<...>
> So, what about real life? What really happens? Don't they have some
> kind of way of dealing with a locked spool?

If I remember right, both mail.local and procmail try to create and
lock a mailbox lock file (usually <spooldir>/<username>.lock), the
same way mailbox/locker.c does. Mail.local additionally applies an
advisory lock to the mailbox itself (via fcntl). If they cannot
acquire the lockfile within a predefined interval, they issue
temporary failure diagnostics. In this case the MTA puts the message
on queue, and reattempts its delivery later, exactly as you have said.

I don't know about other MDA's, though.

Regards,
Sergey