phaedrus@eneevax.UUCP (Praveen Kumar) (09/21/85)
When I try to execute rmail by typing ``M-x rmail'', the cursor goes
back to the beginning of the mini-buffer and just stays there and
everything seems dead. As soon as I type ``C-g'', It says something
like ``Counting messages...'' then it tells me that there isn't any
mail and displays the ``If you are seeing this in the Rmail buffer...''
message.
Also, if I execute rmail-get-new-mail in rmail (by typing ``M-x rmail
RET M-x rmail-get-new-mail RET''), it seems to hang again. I mean
nothing happens; the cursor does a carriage return in the mini-buffer
and just stays there. Has anyone else experienced this? Does anyone
have any idea why this is happening? I looked at the rmail code but
couldn't figure out what was going on. By the way in my .emacs file I
setq rmail-file-name to ~/.mbox.
Any suggestions/helpful hints etc. will be appreciated.
Thanks,
praveen
--
Praveen Kumar
Don't bother me! I'm on an emergency third rail power trip.
phaedrus@eneevax.arpa or {seismo,allegra}!umcp-cs!eneevax!phaedrusvijay@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU (P. Vijay) (09/23/85)
> > When I try to execute rmail by typing ``M-x rmail'', the cursor goes > back to the beginning of the mini-buffer and just stays there and > everything seems dead. As soon as I type ``C-g'', It says something > > Any suggestions/helpful hints etc. will be appreciated. > GNU Emacs RMail'er uses a program called 'movemail'. 'movemail' is the one that locks your spool directory mail box (/usr/spool/mail/phaedrus), and moves all the mail you received since the last time you read it. Thus, 'movemail' must be setgid'ed to the group 'mail', (the group that /usr/spool/mail belongs to). While you are at it, you might also check whether 'loadst' is setgid'ed to the group that /dev/kmem belongs to. You'll probably find 'movemail' in the directory /usr/local/gnuemacs/etc. Actually, it is one of the directories in the list stored in the Emacs variable "exec-path", or the directory that is the value of the Emacs variable "exec-directory". Hope this helps.. --Vijay--
sidney@faron.UUCP (Sidney Markowitz) (09/26/85)
In article <3746@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU> vijay@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU (P. Vijay) writes: >> >> When I try to execute rmail by typing ``M-x rmail'', the cursor goes >> back to the beginning of the mini-buffer and just stays there and >> everything seems dead. As soon as I type ``C-g'', It says something [ ... ] > >the last time you read it. Thus, 'movemail' must be setgid'ed to the >group 'mail', (the group that /usr/spool/mail belongs to). While you There is a bug in movemail.c that causes it to hang up when it does not have write access to the mail spool directory (/usr/spool/mail), rather than produce an error message. That's why everything goes dead, but fixing that still won't let you read your mail. Our installation write protects /usr/spool/mail, does not put it in group "mail", and apparently the powers that be do not want to change that situation. What we have done is to make /usr/spool/mail/$USER a directory owned by $USER, and so the mail spool file is /usr/spool/mail/$USER/$USER. The mailer programs already check for that situation (at least in 4.2 BSD). I submitted the rmail.el fixes to handle that to bug-gnu-emacs quite a while ago, but since I installed them here myself I didn't check whether they were incorporated into the distribution files. So if your system administrator does not want to use setguid to give movemail write access to /usr/spool/mail, than have her/him change your mail spool file to /usr/spool/mail/$USER/$USER. -- Sidney Markowitz ARPA: sidney@mitre-bedford UUCP: ...{allegra,decvax,genrad,ihnp4,philabs,security,utzoo}!linus!sidney
chris@umcp-cs.UUCP (Chris Torek) (09/28/85)
The proper way to fix the mail system---and this has already been implemented in 4.3BSD---is to use flock() on /usr/spool/mail/$USER files, and teach /bin/mail and all the user interface programs to obey this new locking protocol. Using this scheme, /usr/spool/mail need not be writable, which avoids quite a number of security hassles. Also, it is much more efficient than linking files to $USER.lock. If all readers use shared locks, and all writers use exclusive locks, your mailbox remains consistent. Just this afternoon I helped Don Hopkins fix up Gnumacs' movemail program. The new version should be in your net.sources. Compile with `-DUSE_FLOCK', or `-UUSE_FLOCK' for the old behaviour, or edit the #define line. -- In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 454 4251) UUCP: seismo!umcp-cs!chris CSNet: chris@umcp-cs ARPA: chris@maryland
davidk@dartvax.UUCP (David C. Kovar) (10/01/85)
I just switched from UniPress Emacs #264 to GNU. Everything looks good,
save that I have ~100 mail messages tucked away in my Messages directory,
left over from UniPress's rmail. Is there any way to convert them to GNU
or, better yet, is there another version of rmail for GNU that can read
this format? Thanks, in advance.
--
David C. Kovar
USNET: {linus|decvax|cornell|astrovax}!dartvax!davidk%amber
ARPA: davidk%amber%dartmouth@csnet-relay
CSNET: davidk%amber@dartmouth
"I felt like a punk who'd gone out for a switchblade and come back
with a tactical nuke.
'Shit', I thought. 'Screwed again. What good's a tactical nuke in a
street fight?'"
"Burning Chrome" by William Gibsondavidson@sdcsvax.UUCP (Greg Davidson) (10/03/85)
You can cat the message files in ~/Messages (make sure you don't include the summary file) onto your spool file. The next time you read mail: Voila! I prefer to use mh, so when I switched, I cat'ed them onto a file which I then included with an ``inc -ms *filename*''. BTW, is anyone working on improving emacs' mh interface? It can't even burst! _Greg Davidson Virtual Infinity Systems, San Diego