Subject: INBOX is read-only (Pine 3.95, SunOS)

From: [email-masked] (Gregory Tucker-Kellogg)
Date: 1 Nov 1996 16:35:14 GMT

I just upgraded pine on our Sparc from 3.89 to 3.95.  Testing it on
my own account, I get the following message

"Can't open mailbox lock, access is readonly"

I've even tried changing the permissions on /var/spool/mail/, but to
no avail.  Is pine unable to create the .lock file?  Is it not
flock()ing?

Any help is appreciated.

Greg

--
Gregory Tucker-Kellogg
Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology
Harvard Medical School, Boston MA 02115
"Mojo Dobro"    Finger for PGP info

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From: Omar Butaiban <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 Nov 1996 00:34:35 +0300 (GMT-3)

Me too i have the same message 
	"Can't open mailbox lock, access is readonly"
	 i want to know why?
	also i want to know where can i get information  in WWW  about 
	installing pine in my home directory ( just for me )
	and what file that i can downloading it 
	i want to download pine that can  configure to my system
	thanks
 **************************************************************************
 **                              ***                                     **
 ** Omar Butaiban (9411/1826)    *** P.O Box 7532,salmiya                **
 ** ***************************  *** Kuwait 22086                        **
 ** college of engineering       ***                                     **
 ** Computer Engineering student *** [email-masked]    **
 ** Kuwait University            ***                                     **   
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 **************************************************************************
      "Computer: hour upon hour of complexity for a moment of simplicity"

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From: Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 3 Nov 1996 14:45:18 -0800

> 	"Can't open mailbox lock, access is readonly"

Fix the directory protection on /tmp.

-- Mark --	Read http://www.imap.org for the "best kept secret in email"

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.

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From: Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 3 Nov 1996 14:53:35 -0800

On 3 Nov 1996, jeffrey trust wrote:
> > Fix the permissions on /tmp.  Somebody write-protected it.
> Actually I wonder if it might be a pine problem.  Due to widespread
> mailbox-lock errors (and other bugs I'm not aware of) the computer center
> here has reverted to pine 3.91.

Locking is the same in Pine 3.95 as it was in Pine 3.91.

The only difference is that in 3.95, a problem with locking is reported,
whereas in 3.91, it silently proceeded.  In other words, 3.91 (and earlier
versions) is happy to allow your mailbox to be corrupted, whereas 3.95
gives you a warning that there may be a problem.  All it takes is bad
luck; have mail delivery happen at the same time Pine does a rewrite of
the mailbox (checkpoint or expunge). 

On a few systems (e.g. FreeBSD) the lock failure warning really is
spurious.  It was initially to BSD specifications that the code was
written, hence the past practice of silently proceeding.  But most systems
today are not BSD, and even the majority of BSD systems follow the SysV
locking convention (which can have the problem) and not the BSD locking
convention. 

If your computer center reverted to 3.91 because of this warning, they've
swept the underlying problem under the rug.

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From: [email-masked] (jeffrey trust)
Date: 3 Nov 1996 20:08:04 GMT

Mark Crispin ([email-masked]) wrote:
> On 1 Nov 1996, Gregory Tucker-Kellogg wrote:

Jeffrey

--
Jeffrey Trust ([email-masked]).  Student, Dept. of Geological Sciences,
California State University, Northridge (for which I don't speak).
"The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their
energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves."  -John Muir
                       http://www.csun.edu/~hbgeo002/

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From: [email-masked] (Gregory Tucker-Kellogg)
Date: 4 Nov 1996 15:55:52 GMT

Mark Crispin ([email-masked]) wrote:
: On 1 Nov 1996, Gregory Tucker-Kellogg wrote:
: > I just upgraded pine on our Sparc from 3.89 to 3.95.  Testing it on
: > my own account, I get the following message
: > 
: > "Can't open mailbox lock, access is readonly"

: Fix the permissions on /tmp.  Somebody write-protected it.

% ls -ld /tmp
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root            8 Oct  9 13:45 /tmp -> /var/tmp/
% ls -ld /var/tmp
drwxrwxrwx  3 root          1536 Nov  4 10:50 /var/tmp/

% pine
[... menu comes up and then I get this line:]
Can't open mailbox lock, access is readonly

So how are my permissions set incorrectly?