Subject: Lock files in /var/spool/mail

From: "C. Wible" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 02 Jan 1998 20:08:23 -0500

I recently upgraded to pine 3.95. Shortly after I realized that pine
was complaining about creating lock files. I read some web listings of
questions about this problem and found that the only suggestion was to
change the permissions on the /var/spool/mail directory. That is all
good, but, I dont like the idea of users being able to write files to
that directory. I was wondering if sometime in the furure pine might
include an option to specify a seperate lock directory.

Cullin

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From: Y M Kung Charles <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 3 Jan 1998 12:46:15 +0800 (HKT)

Hi Cullin,

I think you can set the sticky bit of your spool, my spool have the bit
set.

Charles

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From: Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 3 Jan 1998 13:14:26 -0800 (PST)

> include an option to specify a seperate lock directory.

That wouldn't be very useful.

The whole purpose of the /var/spool/mail lock file is to lock against mail
delivery.  The mail delivery program looks for a /var/spool/mail lock
file.

If Pine used a different lock directory, then it wouldn't lock against
mail delivery.  Then wouldn't be any point for the locking code at all.
You might as well just delete the useless locking code, and accept that
every so often, your mail file will be smashed because Pine and mail
delivery wrote the mail file at the same time.

If you've hacked your mail delivery program source code to lock someplace
else, then you can hack Pine source code to do the same thing.  It should
not be any easier (e.g. an option for a lock directory in Pine), otherwise
people will be misled (as you were misled) to set that option without
recognition of the consequences.  You're really being protected from
making a bad decision.

It's a complicated issue; I wrote a document which goes into it in much
more detail.  I'll forward you a copy if you're interested.

-- Mark --

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