oved@techunix.BITNET (Oved Ben-Aroya) (12/20/88)
[] I was *very* disappointed to see that Elm2.1 PL1 still needs write permission in the spool mail directory, for a lock file. Maybe that's ok for system V, but 4.3 bsd unix uses the flock system call. If your system is bsd, you can lose new mail, or the the mailbox may get corrupted: Elm thinks he can re-write the mbox, and so does sendmail... I believe that long ago, someone said that he had done the needed work for bsd. I was hoping this 'flock' stuff found it's way to the integrated new Elm version. -- Dr. Oved Ben-Aroya, Taub Computer Center, Technion City, Haifa 32000, Israel BITNET: oved at techunix CSNET and ARPA: oved%techunix.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu UUCP : ...psuvax1!techunix.BITNET!oved
syd@dsinc.UUCP (Syd Weinstein) (12/21/88)
In article <6804@techunix.BITNET> techunix!oved@jade.berkeley.edu (Oved Ben-Aroya) writes: >I was *very* disappointed to see that Elm2.1 PL1 still needs write >permission in the spool mail directory, for a lock file. Maybe that's >ok for system V, but 4.3 bsd unix uses the flock system call. If your >system is bsd, you can lose new mail, or the the mailbox may get corrupted: >Elm thinks he can re-write the mbox, and so does sendmail... As the Elm Coordinator let me state, no one has submitted patches for 4.3 compatibility with flock. If the patches are not submitted real soon, then they will not make the next version. For whatever reason, we had no volunteers from the user community for 'true BSD 4.3' our BSD type people have Pyramids and Sun's, thus this is 4.2 type BSD. I would welcome patches that fix the flock problem, but it is a two fold problem, not just the code to do the flocks, but how do you tell, at compile time, that you need to use the flock code for mailboxes. I need to modify the modules used by Configure to determine to set that flag. Without both parts, the change is useless. Volunteers?, send me e-mail. -- ===================================================================== Sydney S. Weinstein, CDP, CCP Elm Coordinator Datacomp Systems, Inc. Voice: (215) 947-9900 {allegra,bellcore,bpa,vu-vlsi}!dsinc!syd FAX: (215) 938-0235
mike@ists.ists.ca (Mike Clarkson) (12/22/88)
In article <6804@techunix.BITNET>, oved@techunix.BITNET (Oved Ben-Aroya) writes: > I was *very* disappointed to see that Elm2.1 PL1 still needs write > permission in the spool mail directory, for a lock file. Maybe that's > ok for system V, but 4.3 bsd unix uses the flock system call. If your > system is bsd, you can lose new mail, or the the mailbox may get corrupted: > Elm thinks he can re-write the mbox, and so does sendmail... That depends. SunOS 3.5 uses lock files and requires write permissions to /usr/spool/mail. SunOS 4,0 uses network wide locking. Note that you can make elm sgid daemon and /usr/spool/mail owned by group deamon to avoid giving elm suid privs on a Sun 3.5 system. > I believe that long ago, someone said that he had done the needed work > for bsd. I was hoping this 'flock' stuff found it's way to the > integrated new Elm version. I'm sure it still does! Mike. Mike Clarkson mike@ists.UUCP Institute for Space and Terrestrial Science mike@ists.ists.ca York University, North York, Ontario, uunet!mnetor!yunexus!ists!mike CANADA M3J 1P3 +1 (416) 736-5611