Subject: help with .lock files on Linux!

From: Giannis Pistikopoulos <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Jul 1998 12:39:19 +0300

Hello and greetings from Greece,
I have compiled Pine 4.0 for a Linux system and I have the following
problem:
When I run it it tries to create the .lock file in the /var/spool/mail
directory
but it has no access there and I don't think it would be a great idea to
give
write access to everyone in that directory. So it gives me a warning
that the
inbox is vulnerable etc. etc. because it couldn't create the .lock file.

Also, I get an e-mail from mailer-deamon, when I issue the frm command I

get this:
Mail System Internal Data  DON'T DELETE THIS MESSAGE -- FOLDER INTERNAL
DATA
This happens everytime I try to run Pine 4.0 so I still use an older
version.
What I would like to know is how can anyone tell pine to create its
.lock files
in another directory such as the /tmp directory where it will have no
problems.
I searched every page I could find, found a lot of info on .lock files
but I was
unable to find a way to tell pine where to store those files.
Thanx a lot for any help!

Giannis Pistikopoulos
Student of Applied Mathematics
[email-masked]
http://www.math.auth.gr/~jpis

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From: Iztok Polanic <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Jul 1998 12:32:57 +0200 (MET DST)

> inbox is vulnerable etc. etc. because it couldn't create the .lock file.

I'm having the same problem as you. As you already told, this can only be
fixed that you add your user to mail group or enable write permission for
everyone.

> Thanx a lot for any help!

This is also a bad feature of Pine 4.00 IMHO and annoying. There are some
great features, but some are really buggy (lock file, "don't delete this
mail etc.") So my best answer to your question would be to uninstall Pine
4.00 and install Pine 3.96 (or any version you prefer), because we have
to wait that all these problems would be fixed in 4.05 (I can just hope).

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From: Paul Kraus <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 08:59:34 -0400

> fixed that you add your user to mail group or enable write permission for

Have you tried making the pine executable SGID (set GID) mail ? This
would allow the pine program to write to /var/spool/mail, but not the
user separate from pine.

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From: Richard Gering <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 15:42:10 +0200 (WST)

> would allow the pine program to write to /var/spool/mail, but not the

This could indeed work, but...  the user could technically do a shell
escape from Pine and delete other people's mail, something you would not
be able to do when the directory permissions are set to 1777.  A public
writable directory with the sticky bit on REALLY isn't as bad as some
people think!

By the way, switching back to Pine 3.96 or earlier does NOT help, since
these releases require the same semantics to work properly.  The only
difference is that they don't show you the error message, something you
can resemble in Pine 4.00 by enabling quell-lock-failure-warnings in the
configuration setup.  Be warned, though, that you're living dangerously if
you do.  But if you lived happily that way in Pine 3.96...

Regards,

- Richard.

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| Richard Gering ([email-masked]) |  If all else fails, read the manual...  |
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From: Iztok Polanic <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 17:29:33 +0200 (MET DST)

> would allow the pine program to write to /var/spool/mail, but not the
This is an old "trick", but it is very vulnerable AFAIK!
IMHO this shouldn't be happening!!!!
	
								Bye.

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