Read only /var/spool/mail
Anthony Lacey
I have no control over mail delivery to my system and, due to various
system management issues here, I cannot use procmail and .forward to move
my mail down to other user boxes. Thus I need mutt ot be able to read
and write to my /var/spool/mail box. It can read it but can't write to it.
I have tried changing the group and user of mutt to root but this doesnt help.
What is going on? Can anyone help?
TIA,
--
Dr. Tony Lacey - Imaging Science & Bio-medical Engineering, University of
Manchester Stopford Building, Oxford Rd., Manchester. UK. M13 9PT
[+44 (0)161 275 5570] a.l...@man.ac.uk http://www.niac.man.ac.uk/~ajl/
Sven Guckes
> Im trying to use mutt and having problems with read only mailboxes. I have
> no control over mail delivery to my system and, due to various system
> management issues here, I cannot use procmail and .forward to move my mail
> down to other user boxes. Thus I need mutt ot be able to read and write
> to my /var/spool/mail box. It can read it but can't write to it. I have
> tried changing the group and user of mutt to root but this doesnt help.
> What is going on? Can anyone help?
You tell us!
$ ls -l /var/spool/mail/$USER
$ ls -ld /var/spool/mail
$ ls -lL `which mutt`
$ mutt -v
Sven
Dave
Ok, so this isn't my question, but... I've got a pretty similar problem.
Mutt won't open *any* files read/write for me, including ones in my home
directory. The system we have is NIS and home directory is NFS mounted, as
well as the spool directory itself. I compiled my own mutt so it looks for
shared files inside my home directory (details in mutt -v).
Any ideas?
> $ ls -l /var/spool/mail/$USER
-rw------- 1 dms22 users ... /var/spool/mail/dms22
> $ ls -ld /var/spool/mail
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root ... /var/spool/mail -> /var/mail/
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root ... /var/mail -> /amnt/mail/
drwxrwxrwt 2 root users ... /amnt/mail/
> $ ls -lL `which mutt`
-rwxr-xr-x 1 dms22 users 1120403 ... /home/dms22/bin/mutt*
> $ mutt -v
Mutt 0.95.6i (1999-06-03)
Copyright (C) 1996-8 Michael R. Elkins and others.
Mutt comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `mutt -vv'.Mutt
is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute itunder certain
conditions; type `mutt -vv' for details.
System: Linux 2.2.7 [using ncurses 4.2]
Compile options:
-DOMAIN
-HOMESPOOL -USE_SETGID +USE_DOTLOCK +USE_FCNTL -USE_FLOCK
-USE_IMAP -USE_POP +HAVE_REGCOMP -USE_GNU_REGEX +HAVE_COLOR
-BUFFY_SIZE
-EXACT_ADDRESS +ENABLE_NLS
SENDMAIL="/usr/sbin/sendmail"
MAILPATH="/var/mail"
SHAREDIR="/home/dms22/local/share/mutt"
SYSCONFDIR="/home/dms22/local/etc"
ISPELL="/usr/bin/ispell"
To contact the developers, please mail to <mutt...@mutt.org>.
~
-Dave
Stephen P Lee
Dave <dm...@cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>Ok, so this isn't my question, but... I've got a pretty similar problem.
>Mutt won't open *any* files read/write for me, including ones in my home
>directory. The system we have is NIS and home directory is NFS mounted, as
>well as the spool directory itself. I compiled my own mutt so it looks for
>shared files inside my home directory (details in mutt -v).
>
>Any ideas?
>
>> $ ls -l /var/spool/mail/$USER
>-rw------- 1 dms22 users ... /var/spool/mail/dms22
>
>> $ ls -ld /var/spool/mail
>lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root ... /var/spool/mail -> /var/mail/
>lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root ... /var/mail -> /amnt/mail/
>drwxrwxrwt 2 root users ... /amnt/mail/
>
>> $ ls -lL `which mutt`
>-rwxr-xr-x 1 dms22 users 1120403 ... /home/dms22/bin/mutt*
>
>> $ mutt -v
>Mutt 0.95.6i (1999-06-03)
>Copyright (C) 1996-8 Michael R. Elkins and others.
>
>-Dave
>
I'm have the same problem. The incoming mailbox is readonly.
Things were fine with Mutt 0.93.2i on IRIX64 6.2
but computing services changed to SunOS 5.6 so I had to recompile but with
Mutt 0.95.7i as I no longer had the source for 0.93.2i. Here are my details:
mutt -v
Mutt 0.95.7i (1999-08-17)
Copyright (C) 1996-8 Michael R. Elkins and others.
Mutt comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `mutt -vv'.
Mutt is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; type `mutt -vv' for details.
System: SunOS 5.6
Compile options:
-DOMAIN
-HOMESPOOL +USE_SETGID +USE_DOTLOCK +USE_FCNTL -USE_FLOCK
-USE_IMAP -USE_POP +HAVE_REGCOMP -USE_GNU_REGEX +HAVE_COLOR -BUFFY_SIZE
-EXACT_ADDRESS +ENABLE_NLS
SENDMAIL="/usr/lib/sendmail"
MAILPATH="/usr/mail/splee"
SHAREDIR="/faculty1/splee/mutt/man"
SYSCONFDIR="/faculty1/splee/mutt/etc"
ISPELL="/usr/LOCAL/bin/ispell"
To contact the developers, please mail to <mutt...@mutt.org>.
ls -l /usr/mail/splee
-rw------- 1 splee mail 673966 Aug 18 23:01 /usr/mail/splee
ls -ld /usr/mail
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 Mar 23 13:48 /usr/mail -> ../var/mail/
ls -l /usr/lib/sendmail
-rwsr-xr-x 1 root bin 402328 Mar 23 23:01 /usr/lib/sendmail
ls -l ./mutt
-rwsr-xr-x 1 splee users 2234076 Aug 18 17:31 mutt
This version of mutt is much larger than the 0.93.2i version:
(-rwx------ 1 splee users 847704 Jan 14 1999 mutt)
Are there any other permissions I need to be aware of??
Thanks for any help,
Stephen
--
Stephen P. Lee Office: (604) 291-4291
Department of Biological Sciences Fax: (604) 291-3496
Simon Fraser University E-mail: Stephe...@sfu.ca
Burnaby, BC, Canada. V5A 1S6
--
Stephen P. Lee Office: (604) 291-4291
Department of Biological Sciences Fax: (604) 291-3496
Simon Fraser University E-mail: Stephe...@sfu.ca
Burnaby, BC, Canada. V5A 1S6
Zoran Dzelajlija
>ls -l /usr/mail/splee
>-rw------- 1 splee mail 673966 Aug 18 23:01 /usr/mail/splee
>ls -ld /usr/mail
>lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 Mar 23 13:48 /usr/mail -> ../var/mail/
Oh, but this doesn't tell much. You ought to ls -lLd /usr/mail or
ls -ld /var/mail to see if you have to sgid to that directory's group or
not. (If that directory attributes are 775 like, you need to make your
program's binary setgid to be able to write to the mailbox.)
>ls -l ./mutt
>-rwsr-xr-x 1 splee users 2234076 Aug 18 17:31 mutt
Not stripped, perhaps?
>This version of mutt is much larger than the 0.93.2i version:
>(-rwx------ 1 splee users 847704 Jan 14 1999 mutt)
>Are there any other permissions I need to be aware of??
As above.
Zoran
--
In capitalism, man exploits man. In socialism, it's exactly the opposite.
- Ben Tucker, famous vaudeville comedian
Tim Lavoie
>Im trying to use mutt and having problems with read only mailboxes.
>I have no control over mail delivery to my system and, due to various
>system management issues here, I cannot use procmail and .forward to move
>my mail down to other user boxes. Thus I need mutt ot be able to read
>and write to my /var/spool/mail box. It can read it but can't write to it.
>I have tried changing the group and user of mutt to root but this doesnt help.
>What is going on? Can anyone help?
I've recently had the same problem, so before I start, I'll include
mutt -v details:
System: Linux 2.2.10 [using slang 10202]
Compile options:
-DOMAIN
-HOMESPOOL +USE_SETGID +USE_DOTLOCK +USE_FCNTL -USE_FLOCK
+USE_IMAP +USE_POP +HAVE_REGCOMP -USE_GNU_REGEX +HAVE_COLOR
+HAVE_PGP5 +HAVE_PGP2 +HAVE_GPG -BUFFY_SIZE
-EXACT_ADDRESS +ENABLE_NLS
SENDMAIL="/usr/sbin/sendmail"
MAILPATH="/var/spool/mail"
SHAREDIR="/usr/share/mutt"
SYSCONFDIR="/etc"
ISPELL="/usr/bin/ispell"
_PGPPATH="/usr/bin/pgp"
_PGPV2PATH="/usr/bin/pgp"
_PGPV3PATH="/usr/bin/pgp"
_PGPGPGPATH="/usr/bin/gpg"
To contact the developers, please mail to <mutt...@mutt.org>.
Now, in my case, it is my outbox which is affected, and I do get an error
message flashed briefly mentioning some lock error. The difference between
my outbox and most of my other mail folders is that it resides on an
encrypted file system called CFS. Implemented on top of NFS, I'd assume that
the problem is that flock() does not lock over NFS, which fcntl does.
A quick grep through the source does find some flock() calls as one
locking method, so I tried changing my default mbox_type to Maildir, and it
worked. Sure enough, I can delete from the new folder, but the old-style
one is considered read-only.
On a related note, is there a way to get mutt to keep the error message
which flashes by so quickly? Aside from running mutt under gdb... :-)
Cheers,
Tim
--
There is is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.
-- Ken Olsen (President of Digital Equipment Corporation),
Convention of the World Future Society, in Boston, 1977
Tim Lavoie
and +USE_DOTLOCK set. So... why does this puke on old-style mboxen
with NFS or CFS?
Gary Johnson
> On a related note, is there a way to get mutt to keep the error message
> which flashes by so quickly? Aside from running mutt under gdb... :-)
One way to do this is to first run 'script', then run 'mutt'. 'script'
will capture everything sent to the terminal in a file named typescript.
Gary
Tim Lavoie
Good idea, thanks.
--
A bug in the hand is better than one as yet undetected.