dovecot - Apr 2005 - Disable multiple POP3 logins

Hi,

With some POP3 servers,  when you login more than once, the POP3 server says 
"Err: multiple login". How can I achieve that with dovecot ?

For example:

I login to my POP account that is hosted by the ISP:

$ telnet pop.x.com 110
Trying x.x.x.x...
Connected to pop.x.com (x.x.x.x).
Escape character is '^]'.
+OK <25628.1113981451 at bne022mfe>
USER mb13536d
+OK
PASS testcase
+OK
LIST
+OK
1 4608
.
STAT
+OK 1 4608


While that pop3 login is still active, I run another telnet session to login 
again to the same account.

$ telnet pop.x.com 110
Trying x.x.x.x...
Connected to pop.x.com (x.x.x.x).
Escape character is '^]'.
+OK <11709.1113981546 at bne021mfe>
USER mb13536d
+OK
PASS testcase
-ERR multiple login
Connection closed by foreign host.




Thanks,

John

Hello,
> With some POP3 servers,  when you login more than once, the POP3 server
says
> "Err: multiple login". How can I achieve that with dovecot ?
this is nothing that's really useful. At your ISP, this is probably due 
to a lockfile if messages are stored in the mbox-format, because if two 
processed would modify your mbox-file, the file would get corrupt. The 
disadvantage is clear: If the process dies for whatever reason, the 
lockfile wouldn't be removed and you could never login again until you 
call the pop3-administrator to manually remove the lockfile. Also, you 
couldn't check for new messages with webmail, while your email-client is 
downloading an email with a very large attachment.
So far about the benefits and drawbacks of blocking multiple logins, 
however, I can't tell you if dovecot is capable of preventing parallel 
logins.

Regards
Marten