Switch to Maildir and the problem goes away. The issue is that the mbox file is read-locked when the first message is read. And since the POP3 client most likely just keeps reading messages for the entire session, the mbox file kept read-locked all the time. Can't really be fixed without some larger redesign (which is really not worth it).
We see this as well with mbox and pop3 accesses where some pop3 clients do not logout (iphone's are the worst offenders) for 30-90 minutes it seems. Timeout settings in dovecot.conf do not seem to help. procmail backs up waiting to get access to the inbox to deliver mail.
Is there a global timeout we can set that will close any pop3 connection after say 15 minutes? Maildir is not an option currently for many of our servers that use openwebmail, which does not support maildir currently.
Not sure if these pop3 sessions are in a loop, just keeping the conenction open for a reason, etc... but they do not seem to do anything after the initial check besides not logging out...
Rob
That is one reason I am going to get rid of openwebmail. I am not too crazy about having too many processes access the mailspool at the filesystem level. They should have just coded it as a IMAP client.
-- MailScanner is like deodorant... You hope everybody uses it, and you notice quickly if they don't!!!!