[gnu.emacs] need help on rmail

sarvind@janus.uucp (Arvind Srinivasan) (11/22/88)

DISCLAIMER: This is my first posting.

When I invoke rmail, emacs gives me an error in the minibuffer which reads:-
  movemail: unable to create lock file
The same message appears when I try to get new mail from rmail mode.
Do I need write access to /usr/spool/mail or is there a way to get
around this ?

Thanks in advance
Arvind Srinivasan, 			{ []-[] }  sarvind@esvax.Berkeley.EDU
Grad. Student, Dept. of EECS,		{   !   }
University of California, Berkeley,	 { --- }
CA 94720. U.S.A.			  {___}

Arvind Srinivasan, 			{ []-[] }  sarvind@esvax.Berkeley.EDU
Grad. Student, Dept. of EECS,		{   !   }
University of California, Berkeley,	 { --- }
CA 94720. U.S.A.			  {___}

bob@allosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bob Sutterfield) (11/22/88)

In article <26915@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> sarvind@janus.UUCP (Arvind Srinivasan) writes:
>When I invoke rmail, emacs gives me an error in the minibuffer which reads:-
>  movemail: unable to create lock file
>The same message appears when I try to get new mail from rmail mode.
>Do I need write access to /usr/spool/mail or is there a way to get
>around this ?

Here's an excerpt from our top-level Makefile:

|install: mkdir lockdir
|...
|	install -c -s -g mail -m 2755 etc/movemail ${LIBDIR}/etc/movemail

Our /usr/spool/mail is protected like:

drwxrwxr-x  2 root     mail        24576 Nov 22 10:23 mail

That is, movemail must be setgid so that it can write in
/usr/spool/mail to create the lock file.  Our rmail users (of which
I'm not an example) complain quickly every time I forget this...