On Thu, 2003-11-13 at 23:44, Sam Varshavchik wrote: > Andrew Ingram writes: > > > There is one change we have made to SqWebmail's core, that was to remove > > the strcmp checking of the session id, this was to enable multiple > > logins onto the same mailbox. > > Oh, that's nice. Now two people log in, see that there's new mail in INBOX, > open the INBOX simultaneously, each process then attempts to build the new > folder index, and cheerfully scribbles over each other's index file. > > Occasional, mysterious, random failures is exactly what I expect to happen. > > > This has been running fine for a few > > months and I dont think this is the culperate here, since I have logs of > > when users are logging on and can clearly see that these users have had > > premature timeouts. > > I can see exactly how this would be the result, every once in a while. > > To summarize, each request updates the timestamp file. If one request is in > the middle of updating the timestamp file, while the other process just > happens to check the timestamp file, then the check will fail; the second > process will conclude that the timestamp is not valid, and kick out the > login. > > Or, if one of the logins obediently clicks on the logout link, instead of > shutting down the browser, various files are going to be removed, and the > next request from the other login will fail. > > I can go on, and on, and on…
Aha. Thanks for the tips. We did do quite a bit of testing on this feature and did not experience any problems like you suggest, but I see from your description that it is entirely possible, and is obviously dependent on the exact timings of things. What I will do is go back to the logs and try and work out if both these users had multiple logins at the same time. I will report back with the information. Regards, Andrew
