locked mailbox

locked mailbox

[cpt.kirk]

Well, the problem isn't a true file locking problem. I changed the name of
the mailbox file and touched to make a new one. But Pine still thinks my
mailbox is locked by another process. I don't know.

Kirk Wood
Cpt.Kirk@1tree.net
------------------

Your fly might be open (but don't check it just now).

locked mailbox

[cpt.kirk]

Ok,I have the problem solved. The problem started when I mave the tmp
directory so that I could free up some room on a drive. Alas pine could
not write its lock file there, and so Pine would not give me more then
read only access. It reported that another process had the mailbox locked.

I knew the error was wrong after restarting my machine and still getting
the error.

Kirk Wood
Cpt.Kirk@1tree.net
------------------

Your fly might be open (but don't check it just now).

Re: locked mailbox

[Kerry Hoath]

Mail locking works like this:
You flock the file. You also create a mailboxname.lock file with the pid of
the mail process id in it. When mutt manipulates my mailbox it
creates kerry.lock with the mutt pid in it and removes it when done. If
fuser /var/spool/mail/kirk shows nothing; try removing kirk.lock out of
/var/spool/mail. Remember Linux keeps a file around whilst it is open, open
files are not deleted until they are closed so if a process has the mailbox
open that process will see the old contents until it closes it.

Regards, Kerry.
On Mon, Apr 03, 2000 at 12:39:31PM -0500, cpt.kirk@1tree.net wrote:
> Well, the problem isn't a true file locking problem. I changed the name of
> the mailbox file and touched to make a new one. But Pine still thinks my
> mailbox is locked by another process. I don't know.
> 
> Kirk Wood
> Cpt.Kirk@1tree.net
> ------------------
> 
> Your fly might be open (but don't check it just now).
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 

-- 
--
Kerry Hoath: kerry@gotss.eu.org
Alternates: kerry@emusys.com.au kerry@gotss.spice.net.au or khoath@lis.net.au
ICQ UIN: 8226547

Re: locked mailbox

[Janina Sajka]

It's not hard to get into this fix. Usually, it happens to me whan I
forget I've got a Pine open somewhere, and launch it again in a second
console.

Fortunately, the cure is fairly easy and does not require a reboot -- so
you'll never lose that large ftp download ...

1.)	Log in as super user;

2.)	Run ps to get the process ID of open pine sessions. Do this once for
each open coinsole where pine is running for the same user;

3.) Use kill -9 PID to kill the each open Pine session, where PID is the
process ID of the open Pine session.

4.)	Restart Pine and continue doing mail.


				Janina Sajka, Director
				Information Systems Research & Development
				American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)

janina@afb.net


On Mon, 3 Apr 2000 cpt.kirk@1tree.net wrote:

> Well, I am hoping someone here can give me an easy answer. My mailbox is
> locked by another process according to Pine. Now Fetchpop can still add
> mail to the box, but I can't delete any mail, and markers for the new mail
> all reset if I close and go back in. I don't want to restart right now
> because I have a large FTP going on.
> 
> I have exited the system and that didn't help. I closed fetchpop and that
> didn't either. I can't find any process that should be affecting the
> mailbox.
> 
> Kirk Wood
> Cpt.Kirk@1tree.net
> ------------------
> 
> Your fly might be open (but don't check it just now).
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup@braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 

Re: locked mailbox

[Sebastian Taralunga]

Hi Kirk, 

I am not sure how can you use flock (which is a system call
if I remember right), but fuser definitely tells you what
process locks the file. Please make sure that you are using
the "fuser" command and not something else. 

If this does not work, you can kill processes one by one
until you will find the culprit. Also you can try to unmount
the partition if mount lets you do so, or you can even make
a back-up copy of your mailbox file, an then remove the old
file and copy if back again making sure that you preserve
the right permisssions. What else... Let's see. try to
reboot the system, this should always work :-)

Yours'

Sebastian

On Mon, 3 Apr 2000 cpt.kirk@1tree.net wrote:

> flock doesn't show any processes locking the file. Any more ideas?
> 
> Kirk Wood
> Cpt.Kirk@1tree.net
> ------------------

Re: locked mailbox

[Sebastian Taralunga]

Hello Kirk, 


Please try:

fuser /usr/spool/mail/kirk

or whatever your mailbox file is. On my system:


fuser /usr/spool/mail/seba 
/usr/spool/mail/seba:  2380

This will tell you which process keeps your mailbox locked.
Then try:

 ps ax |grep 2380 

(in my case it tells me that pine is the one to blame)

or: 

kill 2380 

Or even more: 

kill -9 2380

This should sort out the problem. 

Yours'

Sebastian

On Mon, 3 Apr 2000 cpt.kirk@1tree.net wrote:

> Pine isn't running in the background. I have necountered that one. The
> problem exists even after killin all user process except a ncftp session
> running in the background.
> 
> Kirk Wood
> Cpt.Kirk@1tree.net

Re: locked mailbox

[Sebastian Taralunga]

Hi Kirk, 

Try to see if you have another pine process hanging
arround: 

ps ax|grep pine
 
and then kill it.. Usually pine says this:

"trying to get mailbox lock from process 2166" 

so try to see what is process 2166 

ps ax|grep 2166

and then either wait for that process to finish (if it is
for instance the netscape's imap client or something
similar) or kill it with: 

kill 2166

Hope this helps. 

Regards, 

Sebastian

On Mon, 3 Apr 2000 cpt.kirk@1tree.net wrote:

> Well, I am hoping someone here can give me an easy answer. My mailbox is
> locked by another process according to Pine. Now Fetchpop can still add
> mail to the box, but I can't delete any mail, and markers for the new mail
> all reset if I close and go back in. I don't want to restart right now
> because I have a large FTP going on.
> 
> I have exited the system and that didn't help. I closed fetchpop and that
> didn't either. I can't find any process that should be affecting the
> mailbox.

Re: locked mailbox

[cpt.kirk]

flock doesn't show any processes locking the file. Any more ideas?

Kirk Wood
Cpt.Kirk@1tree.net
------------------

Your fly might be open (but don't check it just now).

Re: locked mailbox

[cpt.kirk]

Pine isn't running in the background. I have necountered that one. The
problem exists even after killin all user process except a ncftp session
running in the background.

Kirk Wood
Cpt.Kirk@1tree.net
------------------

Your fly might be open (but don't check it just now).

locked mailbox

[cpt.kirk]

Well, I am hoping someone here can give me an easy answer. My mailbox is
locked by another process according to Pine. Now Fetchpop can still add
mail to the box, but I can't delete any mail, and markers for the new mail
all reset if I close and go back in. I don't want to restart right now
because I have a large FTP going on.

I have exited the system and that didn't help. I closed fetchpop and that
didn't either. I can't find any process that should be affecting the
mailbox.

Kirk Wood
Cpt.Kirk@1tree.net
------------------

Your fly might be open (but don't check it just now).