[Dovecot] POP3 locking

Adrian Overbury adrian at inomial.com
Fri Aug 1 07:01:08 EEST 2008


So, the final determination here is that newer versions of Dovecot than 
the one I'm currently running will successfully lock up a mailbox and 
limit access to it to a single session while that session exists (up to 
a finite timeout, which I think is two minutes), right?  Okay, then. 
Has anyone built packages for Ubuntu Dapper Drake from the latest 
sources, then?  I'd appreciate being able to get my hands on thoses.

Adrian

Timo Sirainen wrote:
> On Jul 31, 2008, at 8:10 PM, Mark Sapiro wrote:
> 
>> On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 06:05:27PM +0200, Kai Schaetzl wrote:
>>>
>>> but it seems to be off by default. From my dovecot.conf (1.07):
>>>
>>> #pop3_lock_session = no
>>>
>>> I think it should be on by default.
>>
>>
>> The problem is if you have an MUA/MDA retrieving lots of messages
>> over a potentially slow connection, the mailbox can remain locked
>> for a very long time for a read-only operation.
> 
> Or before when dialups were more common, if the modem disconnected you'd 
> have to wait several minutes until the previous connection timed out.
> 
>> The problem that requires doing it is basically a client problem.
>> Namely, some clients may get confused if in the middle of a series
>> of RETR commands, they get a mailbox locked reply.
> 
> This should never happen with Dovecot. But what could happen is that the 
> message got expunged and the RETR would fail because of that.
> 


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