[comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc] Reliability of berkeley popper POP server

DASCHER@BROWNVM.BROWN.EDU (David Ascher) (01/30/91)

We have been beta-testing a POP3 setup, using Eudora as a Mac client
and the berkeley popper as the unix server (running on Sun Sparc1, SunOS 4.1).

All is fine, both pieces of software are well written, except for this
problem which just appeared today with the popper software:

When a POP3 session is in progress, i.e. when someone is RETRieving
mail from the server, if for any reason the client shuts down (mac failure,
network problems, etc.) all the mail for that user on the server is
lost. Which means that if I'm retrieving the first of 100 messages I
have on the server and the network goes down, my mac freezes, etc,
I lose 99 messages.

This is obviously a serious problem with the popper server.  Has
anyone heard of this problem, and suggested fixes?  We could go into
the code for popper, which is quite simple and nice, but we'd rather
avoid it...

Thanks for any info

David Ascher
Brown University Computing and Information Services