The .lock file will appear as a semaphore when you log in to read your email.
It should disappear immediately on a proper logout, but in any event it errors out after some time period if there's no one reading the mail spool file.
The problem with creating a cronjob will be that then the file could be unlocked while someone is still reading it.
In which case any mail that comes in while the mailbox is being read will either disappear entirely (probably) or else corrupt the file (possibly).
Jeff
How did you ever guess ?So what options do I have, get dovecat running?