Re: Exclusive-access locking of maildrop

["Michael S. Shappe" <[e-mail]>]

At 5:10 PM 6/1/94, Michael D'Errico wrote:
>Either way, the IMAP server has to be "POP-aware" which means there
>needs to be a standard way to lock maildrops, etc. so that different
>implementations can interact correctly.  This would require changing
>both the POP and IMAP specs. and I doubt we'd ever come up with a
>universal way to lock maildrops.  The only other ways to enforce this are
>to force people to use POP and IMAP servers from the same implementor
>(assuming that the servers cooperate) or to pick one protocol over the
>other.

I've handled this by creating a derivative of the bezerkly driver in
C-Client. The mods I've made are currently intended as part of a
'straight-jacket' IMAPD that can ONLY access a person's POP box (it's a
long story, but trust me, it's necessary for us right now). The
modifications also make use of popper's '.user.pop' drop-boxes. They're not
pretty, but so far, they seem to work...


We only bothered for two reasons. The locking was needed for that
one-in-one-sagan chance that a person making use of our 'travelers mail'
service (which is a PINE/IMAP-based straight-jacketed way to access one's
POP box via a telnet session, for the client-impaired or for people who
feel that collecting mail via POP over a v.32bis SLIP line is too slow when
they're paying by the miinute :-) also left their POP-client at work up and
running. The temp-box functionality was necessary because another use of
travelers mail is to get users out of sticky situations that cause their
POP-clients to crash (out of disk space, client choking on a message, among
others). Since unmodified popper leaves things in the temp-box upon
crashing, IMAPD needed to know to look at it if it was going to be useful
for these situations.

Of course, the details are not all that important; the point is, when
you've got source code, it's not rocket science to fix things the way you
need them to work.

Mikey

--
Michael Scott Shappe
CIT Collaboration Systems
"Me? I'm just a lawnmower. You can tell me by the way I walk."
        -- Genesis, "I Know What I Like", _Selling England by the Pound_