We're running qpopper 3.1.2 on an AIX 4.3.3 system.  Recently, we have 
started getting reports of the From line message error from Eudora users (a 
ratio of about 1 out of every 2500 mails received).  We found that a CTRL-@ 
(unprintable) was the first character of the users mail file.

Eventually, we found some one character mail files containing CTRL-@.  By 
looking at the popper logs and mail logs, I found that the time of the file 
corresponded to the time sendmail was delivering mail to that user.  The 
mail (from both internal and external sources) was not delivered to the 
user.  popper logs don't show activity for that user at that time.

Since we use the sendmail supplied by IBM, we decided to talk to 
them.  After two days of explaining the symptoms, IBM still says the 
problem is popper, not bellmail (which actually writes the file).  They 
suggest that popper and bellmail may handle file locking in different and 
incompatible ways.  Their only suggestion is to run the IBM popper, but the 
performance hit makes me wary of this suggestion.

Has this type of problem been reported before?  I found the message in the 
FAQ, but it deals with procmail, which we're not using.

Can you tell me how popper handles file locking, and do you know if it's 
compatible with the way bellmail handles file locking?  Do you have any 
suggestions on solving this problem?

Steve

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