Managing folder lock timeout

Mail folders need to be locked to prevent a simultaneous access by somebody else. For a user, this primarily affects the INBOX which is prone to being written to at any time by an incoming message. sendmail tends to lock the folder for very brief periods during delivery of messages and the mail user agents (MUA), for example Pine (see The Pine MUA), also have only transient locks. It is possible for the folder to be locked for a long time though, and in this case a timeout will occur. sendmail will automatically retry later. User agents require the user to wait while a timeout occurs. The timeout should be set long enough in order to accomplish reasonable tasks, for example, ten seconds. However, if mail folder timeouts occur too frequently on very heavily loaded servers, this value should be increased.

To change the folder lock timeout:

1. Double click on the ``Folder Lock Timeout'' entry to produce a pop-up ``Modify Folder Lock Timeout'' screen.

2. Enter a number between 0 and 999. An error message is produced if you enter an invalid number.

3. Click on OK to return to the main screen.