Tony Gogoi wrote: > We run a linux mail server which runs "sendmail". Users connect to it > using "Outlook Express". 2 questions: First, I'd like to point out that sendmail (or any other MTA) is only part of the equation. E.g. Outlook will only connect to sendmail when sending mail; retrieval will be handled by another program (typically a POP3 or IMAP daemon). In a typical Linux mail server, the delivery chain for inbound mail looks something like: 1. sendmail receives mail via SMTP, and feeds it to an MDA (commonly procmail). 2. The MDA appends the message to the user's mail spool. 3. The user retrieves messages from the spool via POP3 or IMAP; their mail client (e.g. Outlook) communicates with the POP3/IMAP daemon. Outbound mail is likely to be handled by sendmail alone; i.e. it receives a message via SMTP, and forwards it to other mail servers via SMTP. > 1. A particular user sometimes receives the same messages more than once. > Could his mailbox have become readonly sometimes. If so why ? The usual reason for receiving multiple copies of a message is that one of the programs in the delivery chain successfully transferred the message but was unable to reliably determine that it had successfully transferred the message. A concrete example: when mail is retrieved via POP3, and deleted from the server, the server will only actually delete the messages upon receipt of a QUIT command. If the client retrieves some messages, marks them for deletion, then closes the connection without issuing a QUIT command, the messages will be retained, and hence retrieved again on the next attempt. > 2. The same user has "Autologout" entered in the "log file" of the mail > server. How can this be eliminated ? Or is it a configuration issue of > the mail client ? I've never seen such an entry in relation to sendmail; however, the following strings all appear in the ipop3d binary: -ERR Autologout Autologout host=%.80s -ERR Autologout; idle for too long Autologout user=%.80s host=%.80s while these are from the imapd binary: * BYE Autologout Autologout host=%.80s * BYE Autologout; idle for too long Autologout user=%.80s host=%.80s [Both ipop3d and imapd are typically part of the "imap" package.] I suspect that this indicates that the client connects to the POP3/IMAP daemon, retrieves the mail, then keeps the connection open rather than closing it when it's done, so the daemon eventually closes the connection. That would tie in with my comments above regarding duplicated messages. I don't what configuration options those programs have; my version of the package includes no significant documentation (although that comes from RedHat 6.2; the situation may have improved since, so check whether your version includes documentation). -- Glynn Clements <glynn.clements@xxxxxxxxxx> - : send the line "unsubscribe linux-admin" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
