grr@cbmvax.UUCP (George Robbins) (04/06/88)
This one is kind of delayed action: With Ultrix 2.2, sendmail apparently expects the mail spool directory to be setup with protection 1777 (see "man 2 chmod"). If you have a pre-existing spool directory, it is probably set up as mode 755 and sendmail is unwilling to automatically create mail boxes for new users. The symptoms are mail being returned with errors like so: ----- Transcript of session follows ----- mail: cannot append to /usr/spool/mail/renate mail: cannot open dead.letter 554 renate... unknown mailer error 1 Adding the "sticky bit" to the directory permissions restricts users from deleting, renaming or changing the protections of files in the directory unless they are the "owner" of the file. Normally a person having write privledges on the directory can do some of these things. I belive this special treatment may also be appropriate for the /tmp and /usr/tmp directories, basically a matter of how "public" you consider any files/ data in those direcoties.