re tmp.lock I had verbose on. This is the output from a single attempt to subscribe: procmail: [9466] Wed Jul 13 10:29:52 2005 procmail: Assigning "minbounce=3" procmail: Assigning "auto_off_threshold=28672" procmail: Assigning "off_threshold=24476" procmail: Assigning "reject_threshold=30730" procmail: Assigning "submit_threshold=28672" procmail: Assigning "foreign_submit" procmail: Assigning "auto_help=yes" procmail: Assigning "moderated_flag=yes" procmail: Assigning "X_COMMAND_PASSWORD=********" procmail: Assigning "RC_LOCAL_SUBMIT_20=rc.local.s20" procmail: Assigning "RC_CUSTOM" procmail: Assigning "INCLUDERC=" procmail: Assigning "LOCKFILE=tmp.lock" procmail: Locking "tmp.lock" procmail: [9427] Wed Jul 13 10:29:55 2005 procmail: Locking "tmp.lock" procmail: [9466] Wed Jul 13 10:30:00 2005 procmail: Locking "tmp.lock" The last two lines have now repeated for 4 hours. 4,441 procmail processes have been started and we're still going. Seems fairly obvious to me that there's a problem here. I understand the basic principle of locking the file. What I don't understand is how to stop the endless repetitions of start process -- lock ... start process -- lock. It would be good to know what caused this problem and how to fix it. Thanks, Kim