Hi,

I think there is some confusion about what is being deleted and what is
not.  I apologize if I am telling you what you already know, but I want
you to be clear about waht is going on.

Normally, the way POP works is the clients requests mail from the POP
server.  Once the mail has been safely transferred, it is deleted.  Some
POP servers like Qpopper allow the client to request mail to be saved on
the server.  This is what you user is doing when s/he set up Netscape to
"leave mail on the server". After transferring the mail to the client,
Qpopper then marks the mail as "read", but leaves it on the server.

When your Netscape user "deletes" mail, s/he is deleting mail on the local
PC, not the server.  However, when the client contacts the POP server, the
POP server is doing the right thing by not sending the client "already
read" mail. So how do you retrieve it?

Have the user temporarily disable the "leave mail on the server" option.
Then all the mail in the mail file will be downloaded.  Another option is
to install a mail program like Pine on the mail server. Then have the user
telnet to the mail server and access the "old" mail using Pine.

My feeling is that leaving mail on the server is a bad thing. I would
instruct the user on how to backup important e-mail him/herself.  Also, if
you are using quotas, you can easily run into problems.  When a client
access Qpopper, to be safe in case any mail comes in during the actual
transfer process, Qpopper make a copy of the entire mail file
".username.pop". It then sends e-mail from that "pop" file.  Let's say
your users have a 4 MB quota.  If their mailfile gets to be over 2 MB, we
have a problem, becuase Qpopper will be unable to create a copy of the
mail file and you will get a "pop lock".  The user will then be unable to
access his/her e-mail at all.  I used to work for an ISP and it was a
common problem.

Hope this helps,

Mark

On Mon, 9 Jun 1997, Giles Lean wrote:

> 
> I have a user running Netscape talking to qpopper2.3 on a NetBSD/1.1
> server.  This seems to be working well, with one problem.
> 
> When "leave mail on server" is selected mail is left on the server
> even after it has been "deleted" and Netscape will refuse to list
> it.
> 
> Have I missed something?  I've been looking at the Netscape handbook
> but nothing jumped out at me.
> 
> While I'd normally recommend that users download the mail and store
> it on a fileserver somewhere this user is dialled in remotely from
> a PC that is not backed up.

Mark Andres   E-mail: mark@ratbert.aisol.net
    Running NetBSD, 100% Microsoft Free!
 http://www2.giganet.net/private/users/mark/