[iBook] More on my mail crash troubles

[Brian Pearce]

> 'The Mailbox "~/Library/Mail/POP-tmbridgeland at etc etc my e-mail 
> address/INBOX.mbox" is currently locked by "Bridgeland Thomas" on host 
> "etc etc my computers name.local.". If you open a mailbox that is in 
> use you may damage its contents.

Hi, Tom:

Apple says one cause of this could be that the Application did not quit 
properly: "If the application Mail stopped responding or quit 
unexpectedly during its last use, it may not have been able to properly 
close the files. It is safe to click Open Anyway in this case."

But I've had this happen to me every so often; I *think* what happens 
in this case is that the disk becomes overrun by VM swap files, and 
there's no room for Mail (or any other program, for that matter) to 
write to disk. ("Open Anyway" doesn't work.) In fact, when it happens, 
I find I have trouble even quitting other programs, because they can't 
write to the Preference files.

What's interesting about this is that there's no obvious sign that the 
disk is almost full -- it still shows the usual amount of free space.

Anyway, I force a restart (I usually have to, since several programs 
won't quit), and run a utility like MacJanitor to clean out the various 
logs and files -- and that seems to solve the problem.

BRIAN/bpearce at cloud9.net
<http://www.redjacketpress.com>