[Dovecot] unable to lock for exclusive access: Resource temporarily unavailable
Dears,
We have a mail server (RHEL 6.0, Postfix and Dovecot 1.0.7).
The output of dovecot -n is the following:
# 1.0.7: /etc/dovecot.conf
protocols: pop3
login_dir: /var/run/dovecot/login
login_executable: /usr/libexec/dovecot/pop3-login
mail_location: mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/mail/%u
mail_executable: /usr/libexec/dovecot/pop3
mail_plugin_dir: /usr/lib/dovecot/pop3
pop3_client_workarounds: outlook-no-nuls oe-ns-eoh
auth default:
passdb:
driver: pamuserdb:
driver: passwdDuring the last days we face the following problem:
There is great delay in the delivery of the emails. Some seem to not be delivered at all. Issuing the mailq command we get the following message for almost all the email accounts:
(cannot update mailbox /var/mail/xyz for user xyz. unable to lock for exclusive access: Resource temporarily unavailable)
Please send to me any suggestions, because I cannot resolve it and I receive a lot of pressure.
Best Regards,
Nikos
On 25.9.2013, at 10.27, Nikos Papadopoulos npap@ecs.gr wrote:
We have a mail server (RHEL 6.0, Postfix and Dovecot 1.0.7).
mail_location: mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/mail/%u
There is great delay in the delivery of the emails. Some seem to not be delivered at all. Issuing the mailq command we get the following message for almost all the email accounts:
(cannot update mailbox /var/mail/xyz for user xyz. unable to lock for exclusive access: Resource temporarily unavailable)
mbox format is problematic in this way. Newer Dovecot versions (v2.x) do some extra work to unlock the mbox earlier with POP3. That might help you. Or you could switch to Maildir format where this isn't a problem. I'm not sure why it started happening only now and not earlier. Perhaps the POP3 clients are downloading mails more slowly, perhaps you're getting more mail and things are running slower than before.
Could you please provide more information about what you mean with
Maildir format? I am not so familiar.
Is it a quick and stable solution?
Best Regards,
Nikos
Quoting Timo Sirainen tss@iki.fi:
On 25.9.2013, at 10.27, Nikos Papadopoulos npap@ecs.gr wrote:
We have a mail server (RHEL 6.0, Postfix and Dovecot 1.0.7).
mail_location: mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/mail/%u
There is great delay in the delivery of the emails. Some seem to not be delivered at all. Issuing the mailq command we get the following message for almost all the email accounts:
(cannot update mailbox /var/mail/xyz for user xyz. unable to lock for exclusive access: Resource temporarily unavailable)
mbox format is problematic in this way. Newer Dovecot versions
(v2.x) do some extra work to unlock the mbox earlier with POP3. That
might help you. Or you could switch to Maildir format where this
isn't a problem. I'm not sure why it started happening only now and
not earlier. Perhaps the POP3 clients are downloading mails more
slowly, perhaps you're getting more mail and things are running
slower than before.
Am 25.09.2013 11:17, schrieb npap@ecs.gr:
Could you please provide more information about what you mean with Maildir format? I am not so familiar. Is it a quick and stable solution?
Best Regards,
Nikos
Quoting Timo Sirainen tss@iki.fi:
On 25.9.2013, at 10.27, Nikos Papadopoulos npap@ecs.gr wrote:
We have a mail server (RHEL 6.0, Postfix and Dovecot 1.0.7).
mail_location: mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/mail/%u
There is great delay in the delivery of the emails. Some seem to not be delivered at all. Issuing the mailq command we get the following message for almost all the email accounts:
(cannot update mailbox /var/mail/xyz for user xyz. unable to lock for exclusive access: Resource temporarily unavailable)
mbox format is problematic in this way. Newer Dovecot versions (v2.x) do some extra work to unlock the mbox earlier with POP3. That might help you. Or you could switch to Maildir format where this isn't a problem. I'm not sure why it started happening only now and not earlier. Perhaps the POP3 clients are downloading mails more slowly, perhaps you're getting more mail and things are running slower than before.
Maildir is a standard specification
http://wiki.dovecot.org/MailboxFormat/Maildir http://wiki.dovecot.org/MailboxFormat/
there is no easy answer what might be better to use at your side , this depends on your setup ( how many mailboxes, how many mails , how big are mailboxes etc , storagekind etc, traffic , how many pop3 vs imap logins )
your dovecot version is very old , you should upgrade or migrate in any case
Best Regards MfG Robert Schetterer
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participants (4)
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Nikos Papadopoulos
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npap＠ecs.gr
-
Robert Schetterer
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Timo Sirainen