Subject: Global Address Book File

From: [email-masked] (Al Sparks)
Date: 03 Jul 1995 18:49:17 GMT

We've added a (large) global addressbook to our system.  The result is
that pine creates a large (~ 1Mb) file in the /tmp directory (sample
name a3000559) for each user of pine.

Is there a way to have one such file for all users, instead of each
individtual user?  We're wasting lots of space.  The file doesn't
disappear either if a pine is exited abnormally wasting even more
space.
  === Al

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From: Mike Brudenell <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Jul 1995 14:55:16 +0100 (BST)

I think this is because although you have created the "address book" file 
you either haven't created or updated the "lookup" support file.  This 
lives in the same directory as the address book file, and has the same 
name but with ".lu" appended.  (Try looking for .address* in your login 
directory and you'll see what I mean.)

The look up file provides a sort of index into the address book file for 
quick access.

Pine checks the modification times of address book and associated look up 
files as it starts (or soon after, possibly when you start sending a 
message).

If the look up file doesn't exist or is out of date it then tries to 
create/update it automatically.  However if you don't have write access 
to the directory/file, as is usually the case for a global address book, 
it runs into problems.  So instead it makes a temporary version in the 
/tmp directory which it then uses for that session.

The solution is for the maintainer of the global address book to update 
the look up file after any change.  You can do this by logging into a 
username with write access to the directory and file, and then:

	cd to the directory with the address book
	pine -create_lu addrbookname sort-order
	chmod go+r addrbookname.lu

where "sort-order" is one of "dont-sort", "nickname", "fullname", 
"nickname-with-lists-last" or "fullname-with-lists-last" (the same sort 
orders available in the Setup Configuration screen for your personal 
address book).

REMEMBER to reset the protection of the new/modified look up file (the 
"chmod" command above).  I *always* get caught by this; Pine always 
(re)creates it with no access to "group" or "others",  so people can't 
read it, so you *still* get the temporary versions being created in /tmp.

[I'll e-mail the Pine Team separately asking if they can reuse the 
protection of any existing look up file when updating it in some future 
version of Pine.]

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/

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From: Steve Hubert <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 Jul 1995 12:08:27 -0700 (PDT)

On Wed, 5 Jul 1995, Mike Brudenell wrote:

> [deleted]

I don't know if it will help you or not, but it actually uses the umask of
the creator to decide what mode to make the new file.  So, you could
replace the chmod  above by something which caused the umask to be 22
instead of 77.

> protection of any existing look up file when updating it in some future

Good idea.  I'll add it in the next version.  Thanks.

> Mike Brudenell                                         <[email-masked]>

Steve Hubert <[email-masked]>
Networks and Distributed Computing, Univ. of Washington, Seattle