Found a fix for our second problem in a post to the LISTSERV Developers list
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0102&L=listserv-
developers&F=&S=&P=530

Solution was "use the FIOC_INUSE_RETRY
parameter in the site configuration file (site.cfg on NT) to set a
higher time for retrying. The default is 10 seconds, you can try
setting it to 60 -- that should be enough to wait for the other
process to let go, without tying up LISTSERV for too long."