Perplexing, inconsistent POP3 problem

[Sean Noonan]

Greetings list,

I have client that I've installed 4.9-RELEASE for.  I'm tracking stable
(last cvsup/build world/install world/mergemaster was about two weeks ago).
I have a very weird, inconsistent problem that's driving me and the client
nuts.

Users use Outlook 2000 for email client.  My first POP3 server installed was
qpopper v4.0.5.  Occasionally, users' Outlook task progress bar would not
increment.  After a minute or two the client would "timeout" and present an
error message to the user stating that it couldn't communicate with the POP3
server.  Looking at /var/log/messages, I'd see that the users' experience
coincided with log messages such as:

Jan  9 12:37:32 freebee qpopper[33490]: Stats: someuser 0 0 0 0
g1f-wks-02.somedomain.com 192.168.12.102
Jan  9 12:40:32 freebee qpopper[33506]: Stats: someuser 0 0 0 0
g1f-wks-02.somedomain.com 192.168.12.102
Jan  9 12:43:11 freebee qpopper[33517]: Stats: someuser 0 0 0 0
g1f-wks-02.somedomain.com 192.168.12.102
Jan  9 12:43:53 freebee qpopper[33519]: someuser at
g1f-wks-02.somedomain.com (192.168.12.102): -ERR POP EOF or I/O Error
<---------- LOOK HERE
Jan  9 12:43:53 freebee qpopper[33519]: Stats: someuser 0 0 0 0
g1f-wks-02.somedomain.com 192.168.12.102
Jan  9 12:43:56 freebee qpopper[33520]: Stats: someuser 0 0 0 0
g1f-wks-02.somedomain.com 192.168.12.102
Jan  9 12:44:03 freebee qpopper[33521]: Stats: someuser 0 0 0 0
g1f-wks-02.somedomain.com 192.168.12.102


I figured there must be something wrong with qpopper, so I tried cucipop.
Same error from the users' point of view.  Looking at /var/log/maillog, I
now see entries like:

Jan  9 08:54:20 freebee cucipop[25008]: someuser 192.168.12.102 0, 0 (0), 0
(0)
Jan  9 09:10:02 freebee cucipop[25116]: someuser 192.168.12.102 1, 0 (0), 0
(0)
Jan  9 09:11:02 freebee cucipop[25120]: someuser 192.168.12.102 1, 0 (0), 0
(0)
Jan  9 09:13:02 freebee cucipop[25126]: lost someuser 192.168.12.102 60, 0
(0), 0 (0) <---------- LOOK HERE
Jan  9 09:18:02 freebee cucipop[25159]: someuser 192.168.12.102 0, 0 (0), 0
(0)
Jan  9 09:25:03 freebee cucipop[28179]: someuser 192.168.12.102 1, 0 (0), 0
(0)
Jan  9 09:28:03 freebee cucipop[28266]: someuser 192.168.12.102 0, 0 (0), 0
(0)

Surely both POP3 servers don't have something wrong with them, so I decided
to switch email client from Outlook to Outlook Express.  Same problem.  Then
I tried to avoid M$ altogether and tried Eudora 6.0.1, but Eurdora seems to
blow up on every machine I've tried it on.

Googling for help, I saw a couple of issues relating to FreeBSD's TCP
extensions.  I used sysctl and turned them off, but alas it makes no
difference.

All other apps work fine.  Mail server is in-house.  I've never seen
anything like this before.

Any suggestions???

TIA,

Sean Noonan



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