Re: POP3 fragile?

[Stainless Steel Rat <ratinox@peorth.gweep.net>]

* Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de>  on Tue, 15 Jul 2003
| Hmm.  Perhaps the connection wasn't really stuck and the QUIT that C-g
| triggered was actually transmitted to the server?

That seems not possible.  C-g halts running Emacs-Lisp forms, right?  So,
hitting C-g should stop any form that might try to send the "QUIT<RET>"
string to the server, right?

[snip]

| Maybe the SSH tunnel is causing the problems: something is stalled, I
| press C-g, and the server assumes that the messages up to this point
| have been sucessfully transmitted.  Actually, this *could* be the
| problem if individual messages don't have to be acknowledged at the
| POP layer.

POP is not supposed to work that way.  The client can send DELE commands to
the server, and the server will keep track of them, but the DELE marks
are not supposed to be processed until the client sends the QUIT command
AND the connection closes gracefully.  Anything else, the POP server is
supposed to assume that something failed and clear the DELE marks so that
no mail is lost.

If your POP server does not work that way then it is way, way, way out of
spec, and you should be addressing this to your systems administrators.

-- 
Rat <ratinox@peorth.gweep.net>    \ Warning: pregnant women, the elderly, and
Minion of Nathan - Nathan says Hi! \ children under 10 should avoid prolonged
PGP Key: at a key server near you!  \ exposure to Happy Fun Ball.
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