sendmail / temp files

[Fred Martin_1]

At any given moment on our system, I can issue the following:

# find /home -name [a-z][a-z][a-z].[0-9]*
/home/frp/frp.11382
/home/fas/fas.3996
/home/fgc/fgc.29648

These are all mail files that have been dropped into homes, as I described above.

I just made a huge discovery. The files are created when the users POP in to get mail, NOT when the mail is being delivered to their inbox.

I dropped several large emails into my own inbox, then when I clicked on my mail client's send-receive button 30 seconds later, the temp file appeared briefly.

Apparently, when an inbox is too large, or perhaps mailformed, I have issues.

Well, this happens with users on Outlook, Eudora and Thunderbird, so it's not the client at fault.

As mentioned, perhaps my /home area is too small and it's as simple as that.

I don't know anything about the processes involved when POP is is session.

[Fred Martin_1]

...although I'm learning :)

We're using FacetWin POP3, so the process fct_pop3d appears briefly when I pop in for mail from my PC.

I think I need to look at the FacetWin POP3 environment.

[Fred Martin_1]

Alas, docs are sparse. No mention of any temp files or temp directories, or anything configurable.

Only that FacetWin's POP3 is in compliance with RFC1460, Post Office Protocol - Version 3, June 1993.

I have a question, I started used FacetWin because in the old days HP-UX 9 & 10 didn't have a POP3d.

I'm running HP-UX 11.11, does it now?

[Christopher Caldwell]

I bet those temp files have something to do with your POP daemon. Look in the POP docs and your configuration to see where POP wants to write temp files (and mail spool files).

With most modern POP daemons, you've got good ability to control what goes where.

We usually set up a hierarchy outside of /var/mail or /home for POP, so that if things break, it's just POP breaking (e.g. /var/spool/pop).

[Fred Martin_1]

Yeah that's the right track, I figure. I've been looking, it doesn't appear that the FacteWin POP3d (our version circa 1999) is configurable enough that I can tell it to put temp files anywhere else.

If not, I'll have to increase /home to be quite large.

Or switch to another POP3d.

[Christopher Caldwell]

We've generally used qpopper from Qualcomm:
http://eudora.com/products/unsupported/qpopper/documentation.html

You've got to compile it. I bet there's a built version at the porting archive.

[Fred Martin_1]

Thanks folks, been scratching my head about this one for a long time, it's nice to have it narrowed down to the pop3 daemon, after thinking it was sendmail, all this time. Looks like more disk space in /home is what I'll try first.