Subject: Reading root's mail

From: Guy BRAND <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 1995 23:35:47 GMT

Hi,

  I've tried to check root's mail unix PC-Pine and it doesn't work. In the
INCOMING-FOLDERS I have given the {host}inbox specifier, but when I want to
check the mail, I enter root and its password, but Pine says Login error. Of
course the password is the right one.. I was just trying to avoid reading my
(root) fourth mailbox using a telnet session. Why isn't that working ? Is 
there an inherent limitation within Pine ?

GB

    ___  ___     Guy BRAND - [email-masked] -      ====
   /  |\/  |\    *******************************************    =---====
  /   |/   ||    et Fondation : [email-masked]   =-----====
 / /|   /| ||    WWW : http://wwwchimie.u-strasbg.fr/GB.html   ==---=====
/_/ |__/ |_||                                                   ========
\_\/\__\/\_\|           "Souriez demain sera pire !"              ====

---

From: Mike Brudenell <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 1995 16:14:36 +0100 (BST)

I queried this some time ago when I tried to do the same thing.

Basically it is not possible to read root's mail using an IMAP 
connection.  Specifically the IMAP server code forbids root from 
successfully authenticating, even if the correct password is used.

This is apparently to side-step the security issues which tend to arise 
when any protocol supporting "root" access is created.

The advice I received was to have root's mail delivered to an "ordinary" 
username and login to that in order to read it over an IMAP connection.

However this would have been dificult in our environment.

The solution I went for was to access the mail files straight from disk 
for root.  Obviously this only works if the mailstore is mounted on the 
machine you are doing the reading from.  Ours is, but we use IMAP for all 
other users to access their mail (and hence get the benefits of IMAP).

Things were complicated slightly by my setting up IMAP access to the 
INBOX in the global "fixed" configuration file, thereby forcing all users 
to use IMAP to access their INBOX.  This included root...

My solution was to modify the Pine source code slightly so that if Pine 
was being used by "root" AND the "fixed" configuration file was being 
read THEN the "inbox-path" variable's value was ignored (as if it wasn't 
present in the "fixed" file).

This meant that root defaulted to accessing the INBOX file directly from 
the NFS-mounted filestore, but that all other users were forced to use 
IMAP for theirs.

This difficulty does not arise if you aren't forcing IMAP access to the 
INBOX in the "fixed" configuration file: simply modify the inbox-path 
variable in root's Pine settings to not use IMAP.

If you ARE forcing IMAP access in the "fixed" configuration file you 
could give me a shout and I'll dig out my patch for the Pine 3.91 source 
code to let you "override" (ignore) the "inbox-path" variable value just 
for the root username.

Mike Brudenell                                         <[email-masked]>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Computing Service, University of York, Heslington, York, YO1 5DD, UK
Tel: +44-1904-433811  FAX: +44-1904-433740  http://www.york.ac.uk/~pmb1/

---

From: Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 1995 23:18:35 -0700

> there an inherent limitation within Pine ?

It's not Pine, it's in IMAP server that's doing you in.  You're not
allowed to log in as root (or any other uid 0 user) over IMAP.

"It's not a bug, it's a feature."

-- Mark --

DoD #0105, R90/6 pilot, FAX: (206) 685-4045  ICBM: N 47 39'35" W 122 18'39"
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.