After rebooting my wifes PC, to install yet more Winblows updates, Outlook no longer is able to retrieve mail from my Linux server. It just times out waiting for a reply.

I checked at my server, and fetchmail is still pulling mail from the ISP, and storing it in the mail file. But when popa3d is invoked, by Outlook trying to get the mail, is stalls, and never returns. This is what I get:

What I don't get, is the last message, which should be something like:

Also, the "child" version of popa3d, running as "erindoors" is still active. This eventually times out with:

And the cycle starts again.

I've tried killing just the "child" process. I've also tried killing the main daemon process and restarting it, but I get the same stall the next time her Outlook tries to pull mail.

The popa3d process spawned to retrieve my mail, is still working perfectly. It's only hers that is now failing.

BTW Absolutely nothing was touched on my Linux server at the time this started happening.

Any ideas anyone.

Cheers.

To answer my own question. It's now working again. Except I didn't change anything.

While I was testing this, I kept switching my wife's pop server between the "real" one, and mine. It always worked on the "real" one, but mine always dropped into the wait condition, so I left it pointing at the "real" one for now.

This morning, I thought I'd do some more investigation, including some TCP/IP traces to see what was flowing over the network, and it worked perfectly first time. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr

Maybe there was some file "lock" outstanding that took a while to go "stale" and get blown away. Thoughts.

Cheers.

OK, I need to revive this thread. I've just re-booted my wife's PC, again for WinBlows updates, and I've hit exactly the same issue again.

So, has anyone any thoughts on why popa3d is acting up like this.

Cheers.