Subject: Mail can no enter the "INBOX" folder

From: [email-masked] (Wang Chen)
Date: 8 Mar 1996 12:28:07 -0500

Hi there
	I deleted about 30 lines in file /usr/mail/<my username> by 
accidence. I can not recover it. The big problem for me is : the new mail 
can not enter to " INBOX". Can anybody tell me how i can make "INBOX" 
work. Most appreciate it.

---

From: [email-masked] (Peter Whittaker)
Date: 8 Mar 1996 19:01:40 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
>work. Most appreciate it.

I don't know if this is the best advice, but what the hey:

    0.  QUIT PINE!!!
    1.  chmod 600 /usr/mail/<your username>
    2.  vi /usr/mail/<your username>
    3.  :w ~/somefile <return?
    4.  1G <return>
    5.  dG
    6.  :wq <return>
    7.  chmod 660 /usr/mail/<your username>
    8.  try pine again

This saves the contents of your know mangled INBOX to ~/somefile, so
that you can try to recover a few messages from somefile, then removes
all entries from INBOX.  Be sure to quit pine first.

This may also prevent mail from being delivered while you are attempting
to toast the box's content (by taking away the system's permissions to
write into the file).  Note that this will only work on some systems (on
others, the mail delivery process runs as root, and root can always
write to your files...).  In that case, steps 1 and 7 are useless.

If /usr/mail is writable by you, consider the following instead

    0. QUIT PINE!!!
    1. mv /usr/mail/<your username> ~/somefile
    2. touch /usr/mail/<your username>
    3. try pine again

Chances are that you do not have write permission to this directory.

pww

-- 
Peter Whittaker      [~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~]   X.500 Specialist
[email-masked]      [  http://www.entrust.com  ]   Nortel Secure Networks
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