Mail.App Folders locked on localhost

[edlake]

Sometimes I get the message that Mail folders are locked on localhost by user edlake It gives me the opportunity to open anyway and risk damaging the folders or quitting. There is a third option, but I don't remember it just now. However, I am edlake and I'm logged in as such. I've recently opened the folders anyway and haven't seen any sign of damage. Does anyone know what causes this?

[lerkfish]

look here (http://forums.osxhints.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=95) to see more discussion of this anomaly.

[Roy Vincent]

Apple cites three causes of the locked mailbox alert. See its KB article #106197. I know that two of these have caused mailbox alerts in my case: Changing newtworks while Mail is open and two Mail accounts set to deposit incoming mail in the same inbox.

But lots of us get lots of these locked mailbox alerts when Apple's three causes are non-existent. I was having three or four such alerts a day, about a week ago. I got rid of them by finding out from Disk First Aid that I had some small problems in OS X and then running fsck -y from single user mode. The mailbox alerts are now gone. (This is modest evidence at best, I know, that running fsck -y was the healing agent. But its worth a try if you are having many locked mailbox alerts and Disk first Aid shows that you have some problems in OS X.)

BTW, I have never seen any bad consequences from just opening the locked mailbox when you get a locked mailbox alert.