frank@dvm.UUCP (Frank Wortner) (11/11/86)
In article <33400004@pbinfo.UUCP> michael@pbinfo.UUCP writes: > > > Can anybody explain me, why GNU Emacs (17.64) > cannot read in my 'rmail-inbox-list' on a Pyramid? > > I am in the 'ucb'-universe and the value of this > variable is set to the (I think) correct values > ("~/mbox" "/usr/spool/mail/$USER"). > > Michael I had this same problem my VAX (Ultrix 1.0 = 4.2BSD). The problem seems to revolve around the fact that emacs needs to make a copy of and then delete the files in the rmail-inbox-list. It does this by means of a program called movemail which resides in emacs's etc directory. The mail directory (/usr/spool/mail) is often owned by root and only writable by root. (Mail programs run setuid.) When movemail tries to move the mailbox from that directory,it finds that it can't because it does not have write permission. The cure is either to make the directory /usr/spool/mail mode 0777 (drwxrwxrwx) or to make movemail a setuid program owned by root. (BTW, you might want to look at source first and patch it to prevent unauthorized stealing of mail.) If neither of these cures is acceptable, then the only thing you can do is read your mail using Unix's mail command, save the messages in "mbox" and then use emacs to re-read your mail. It will probably work, but it's hardly worth it. -- Frank ...!inhp4!allegra!phri!orville!dvm!frank
steiner@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU (Dave Steiner) (11/12/86)
You might check to see that the program "movemail" has the gid bit set
and has group "mail". Otherwise it can't read mail files and you get
the behaviour that you were seeing.
ds
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