Sendmail problem with leftover lock files

[Rich Wales]

We here in the UCLA CS Department have been having a problem for several
months with Sendmail leaving mail queue files locked.

We have three Sun 3/280's running SunOS 3.4.  We are *not* running Sun's
Sendmail; rather, we are running the Berkeley 5.58 Sendmail as adapted
for the Suns by Lawrence Berkeley Labs (LBL).  Each Sun has its own mail
queue directory (i.e., we are not NFS'ing /usr/spool/mqueue).

The problem we see is that some files in an outgoing mail queue direc-
tory (/usr/spool/mqueue) get locked (with "lf..." and "xf..." files
present) and stay locked, even though the Sendmail daemon is clearly not
processing them at the time.

Removing the offending "lf..." and "xf..." files allows everything to go
through without difficulty.

In at least some cases, it appears that the files get locked right from
the start, as the mail gets initially submitted.  Our users use at least
three different front-ends to compose and send mail (Berkeley Mail, MH,
and a UCLA-specific program); the problem seems to be plaguing users of
all three of these front-end systems.  However, I'm not sure whether all
the abnormally locked files are locked right from the start (though I'm
going to start checking for this from now on).

There are never any core dumps around (neither in /usr/spool/mqueue, nor
in the directories of users whose mail files are found to be locked).
The Sendmail daemon spun off from /etc/rc ("/usr/lib/sendmail -bd -q1h")
is always still around.

Has anyone else ever seen this problem?  Any ideas for a solution?

-- Rich Wales // UCLA Computer Science Department // +1 (213) 825-5683
	3531 Boelter Hall // Los Angeles, California 90024-1596 // USA
	wales at CS.UCLA.EDU           ...!(ucbvax,rutgers)!ucla-cs!wales
"Could you please continue the petty bickering?  I find it most intriguing."