Subject: bug: read-only pinerc and PC-Pine

From: Nancy McGough <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 27 Jun 1999 17:43:07 -0700 (PDT)

I was experimenting and changed the pinerc file to be read-only and
then started PC-Pine. It didn't work properly (which is fine) BUT it
would not let me quit. I had to CTRL-ALT-DEL to get out of PC-Pine. It
seems like you should be able to quit in the normal way even though
PC-Pine is unhappy with the read-only pinerc. Also, it would be nice
to be able to have the option of having a read-only pinerc.

Thanks,
Nancy

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From: "Ed Greshko" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 15:35:59 +0800

Hello Nancy,

> Also, it would be nice

What do you feel would be the value in that?

Thanks,
Ed

---

From: Timothy J Luoma <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 07:54:30 -0400

Replying to message of Mon, 28 Jun 1999 15:35:59 +0800
	from "Ed Greshko" <[email-masked]>
	regarding ``RE: read-only pinerc and PC-Pine''
	
> > Also, it would be nice to be able to have the option of having
> > a read-only pinerc.
>

Well... speaking only for myself....

Flexibility, and the assurance that settings don't get changed without being  
sure that you want to change them (ie make file writable, then make changes,  
then make file read-only)

TjL

---

From: "Ed Greshko" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 21:25:05 +0800

Hi,

> then make file read-only)

How does the assurance improve/differ over the process which asks you to confirm
your changes?  Other than adding to the complexity, find the pinerc file, make
it writeable, go back to pine, make the changes, answer the "commit" question,
make pinerc file read-only, I can't see where there is added value or security.
But, I've been known to be dense.  :-)

Can you give me an example of the "flexibility" it will impart?

Thanks,
Ed

---

From: Nancy McGough <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 08:42:07 -0700 (PDT)

> What do you feel would be the value in that?

Here are two reasons:

* It would be a way to avoid those pesky messages that say `unexpected
  pinerc change -- do you want to overwrite your pinerc?' I get these
  msgs all the time (and have posted to this list about them) because
  I almost always have many instances of Pine running at the same time
  and Pine does not like it when the two instances get out of sync for
  some reason (usually I think it is the window position settings).

* I help a lot of people with setting up, configuring, and optimizing
  Pine and it would be great if during part of that process I could
  change their pinerc to be read-only so I know it won't change on me
  while I'm doing an experiment. THIS is how I found the bug I
  reported.

I hope this makes sense,
Nancy

---

From: Nancy McGough <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 08:45:58 -0700 (PDT)

On 28 Jun 1999, Ed Greshko <[email-masked]> wrote:
> How does the assurance improve/differ over the process which asks
> you to confirm your changes?  Other than adding to the complexity,
> find the pinerc file, make it writeable, go back to pine, make the
> changes, answer the "commit" question, make pinerc file read-only, I
> can't see where there is added value or security. But, I've been
> known to be dense.  :-)

Pine makes some changes to the pinerc that it does not ask you to
confirm so currently there is no way to prevent these changes that I
know. Examples are last-version-used and last-time-pruned (I didn't go
check the exact wording of these variables).

Are you convinced yet Ed?!

---

From: "Ed Greshko" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1999 00:31:19 +0800

Nancy,

>   some reason (usually I think it is the window position settings).

I wasn't aware that multiple instances of pcpine or pine was actually supported.

In any event, if pine is re-writing its pinerc file with "widow position
settings" then wouldn't it stand to reason that if you made the file read-only
and pine may complain about not being able to write the position information.
Also, even if it doesn't complain, I gather it is re-writing this information
for a pupose.  If the file is read-only you may be causing another feature to
break.

>   while I'm doing an experiment. THIS is how I found the bug I

To a degree.

Regards,
Ed

---

From: "Ed Greshko" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1999 01:03:04 +0800

Nancy,

> Are you convinced yet Ed?!

Actually, you've convinced me that the pinerc file should *not* be made
read-only.

I'd forgotten about the "last-time-pruned" variable.  Not allowing pine to
re-write the file would seem to break the feature of pruning the sent mail
folder at end/start of month.

If an application relies on a file for certain status information then not
allowing the application to update its status is doing a disservice to the
implementation.

Sounds like what you really need is the equivalent of the unix "pinerc.fixed" in
the PC world.

Regards,
Ed

---

From: Jessica Rasku <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 10:10:01 -0700 (PDT)

> I wasn't aware that multiple instances of pcpine or pine was actually

	It is, and it isn't.  It is just not designed to only allow one
instance.  I've not had this problem myself.  I do run multiple instances
fairly regularly (ussualy by accedent), and the only problem that I've run
into is the speed at which it trys to obtain the lock for an open folder,
and that it makes both instances read only.  It's more an annoyance than
anything in my mind...  

> In any event, if pine is re-writing its pinerc file with "widow
> position settings" then wouldn't it stand to reason that if you made
> the file read-only and pine may complain about not being able to write
> the position information. Also, even if it doesn't complain, I gather
> it is re-writing this information for a pupose.  If the file is
> read-only you may be causing another feature to break.

	As far as I know, Window possitions are not storred in the pinerc
file.  This was a bit confusing to me.  Making the file read only will
cause problems of various nature, but it really shouldn't break any
feature.  And the not being able to exit pine I'd say is a broken feature.
And particularly badly broken...  

								Jessica

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From: Alex Sotelo <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 16:24:10 -0400

I don't have PC-pine, but what I would do is put a batch file in the
startup folder that will make a backup copy of the .pinerc file, that
way you will always have something to rely upon in case they (or you)
mess up the current .pinerc. Just my $0.02

-- 
Alex Sotelo
home: mailto:[email-masked]
work: mailto:[email-masked]

---

From: Scott Leibrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 14:22:59 -0700 (PDT)

> Sounds like what you really need is the equivalent of the unix "pinerc.fixed" in

Maybe so, but Pine should be able to quit when it can't write to the
.pinerc.  For example, it quits just fine if you answer no to the
"unexpected pinerc change - overwrite with current config?" question.  It
should say something like "unable to write pinerc (read-only).  quit
without saving changes?".

-- 
Scott Leibrand
[email-masked]
How to contact me:
http://students.washington.edu/leibrand/howtocontactme.html
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* Unsolicited commercial email may be billed $500 per message.          *

---

From: Jessica Rasku <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 15:19:44 -0700 (PDT)

> without saving changes?".

	My Pine (running on Linux), has absolutely no problem with a read
only .pinerc.  I didn't believe that this was a problem, in fact, I think
that I have run into cases where the owner has been changed to root, and I
as jrasku have not been able to write to it.  Maybe this is a quirk with
PC-Pine?  

							Jessica

---

From: "Ed Greshko" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1999 07:54:12 +0800

Scott,

> without saving changes?".

No disagreement on that point.

Probably a simple problem with file status checking in the WinXX version of pine
which has probably existed since day 1.  My feeling is that the implementers
never intended anyone to make the pinerc read-only and therefore never tested
it.

Regards,
Ed

---

From: "Ed Greshko" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1999 08:22:38 +0800

> instance.

You may find it interesting to read the tech-notes supplied with pine.  A
portion of the document reads:

   PC-Pine does not do any folder locking. It depends on IMAP servers to
   handle locking of remote folders. It is assumed that only one Pine
   session can be running on the PC at a time, so there is no contention
   issue around folders on the PC itself.

The text prior to that statement is also of interest as it discusses the Unix
file locking employed by pine.

I feel that if an application is "not designed" to allow a function or feature
then the function or feature is "unsupported".

>From the pinerc file of PCpine:

# Window position in the format: CxR+X+Y
# Where C and R are the window size in characters and X and Y are the
# screen position of the top left corner of the window.
window-position=98x32+17+1

You said, "Making the file read only will cause problems of various nature".  If
the file is read-only and pine can't write information it relies upon to make
features/functions work in the way they were designed then that is a feature
you've managed to break.

Of course, the pine implementers could "fix" the problem by inserting a
disclaimer into the source which indicates that a read-only pinerc is
unsupported.  I'm sure they'd have to get very specific in their wording.  But,
I don't really want to turn them into lawyers.  :-)

Regards,
Ed

---

From: Peter Daum <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1999 09:35:19 +0200 (MEST)

Hi,

some people here raised the question, whether being able to run
Pine with a read-only configuration would be of any use. I
personally am desperately looking for a good way how to do
exactly this. Here's the background:

I am maintaining a PC-pool (running Win98) at a university of
social work. Most students use the pool very infrequently - often
they only show up to print out something they have written
elsewhere. For this reason, they normally don't have and don't
need their own home directories - it simply wouldn't be worth the
effort.

What pretty much all of them do want, however, is access to
email. For this, we create accounts for them on our mail server.
Traditionally, users were telnetting to the mail server and
running pine there. Many students have major difficulties with
this.

What I would like to do, is set up PC-pine in a network directory
without write permission, pre-configured in a way, that users can
access their email via IMAP. Actually, this works fairly well: On
startup, pine will ask for the username and password and from
there on function as expected - I did not notice any serious
problem or crashes as it has been reported here.

What is irritating, however, and will scare inexperienced users
(pretty much all of them) is that pine will issue plenty of
warnings and error messages about being unable to write to pinerc
and other files. If there was a command line flag to tell pine
that it is running read-only (basically just suppressing all
those error messages), most of my problems with this setup would
be solved.

Did I overlook something? Anybody knows a better way? Or maybe a
Windoze email client that is better suited for this purpose (I
personally would prefer pine). It looks like the sources for
PC-Pine are not available, so I can't just comment out any
unwanted error message and recompile the program. Maybe any of
the Pine developers can be convinced, that such a "read-only
mode" would be a good thing (tm)?

Regards,
                  Peter
-- 
                                             __o  
     Peter Daum <gator at cs.tu-berlin.de> _'\<_ 
       - pgp messages welcome -       ____(_)/(_)

---

From: Scott Leibrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1999 07:57:43 -0700 (PDT)

I don't know if this would accomplish exactly what you want, but could you
just run Pine with a -p c:\temp flag to force it to put everything in
c:\temp, and then run a batch file to deltree c:\temp and mkdir c:\temp?
This would let pine have write access to its config files, and then delete
the config files as soon as they're no longer in use.

If you don't want to restart between users, you could also have the batch
file run every time you run pine.  For example, the Pine icon could link
to c:\pine.bat, which could say something like:
deltree c:\temp
mkdir c:\temp
(if necessary) xcopy %networkpath%\pine\*.* c:\temp
%networkpath%\pine\pine.exe -p c:\temp\pinerc

Would that do any good?

---

From: Joe Pruett <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1999 11:05:43 -0700 (PDT)

so, is it possible to restrict what are legal values for the charset
option?  it seems like alpha, numeric, and dashes should be enough.  i'm
guessing this is in some mime or other rfc.

---

From: Jessica Rasku <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1999 11:18:16 -0700 (PDT)

> mode" would be a good thing (tm)?

	Now this may be a bit of a leap, but could you possibly set up the
PC-Pine so that it will come up as read write, but gets over written every
time that a person logs out?  It sounds like you would have a single
username/password combination to get into this setup, but wouldn't there
be a way to run some sort of script to have the ``actuall files'' stored
in a backup somewhere, and the ``working files'' created and destroyed
with each login?

							Jessica

---

From: Scott Leibrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1999 12:18:02 -0700 (PDT)

> in a backup somewhere, and the ``working files'' created and destroyed
 
Exactly.  With the batch file I started to write, for example, you could
copy a "template" pinerc that had everything but the user's log-on info.
They could then customize it, and when they log out it would get deleted.
Is this the kind of think you want to do?

---

From: Peter Daum <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1999 22:46:04 +0200 (MEST)

Hi,

[...]
> in a backup somewhere, and the ``working files'' created and destroyed

If there is no other way, I might do something like that, but it
certainly would not be a particularly good solution and also
possibly misleading for users who save a message and can't find
it afterwards, because it was automatically deleted later on ...

regards,
                Peter

---

From: Bino Gopal <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 1 Jul 1999 12:00:48 -0400 (EDT)

Hi all,

I'm using Pine 3.95 on a Solaris box.  Here's what I want to do:

A friend sends me a nice email with some important info the body of the
message.  He also sends a program/word doc/picture--any other sort of
*BIG* attachment.  I download this to my pc and want to delete the huge
file from my inbox BUT I want to save the nice text part of the message...
See where I'm going with this?

Questions:
1) Is there a way to do this in Pine?  Prune attachment or something?
I've looked around but never seen anything like it--maybe I just missed
it completely?  Is it in 4.10?

If there isn't a way to do it in Pine (yet), is it possible to add this
feature (feature request! feature request! :).  It seems like it'd be
pretty useful for most anyone; I can see many instances of wanting to save
the text of a message, but not wanting to keep the huge attachment around.

2) What's the easiest way to do this outside of Pine?  Save the message to
it's own folder, open it up in emacs (or another editor) and cut out the
unwanted text?  Can anyone think of a more elegant (and quicker) solution?

Thanks in advance for any help/ideas/support!

							BINO

--
Subject: Haiku for computer lovers

Stay the patient course
Of little worth is your ire
The network is down

---

From: Mike Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 1 Jul 1999 11:48:35 -0500 (CDT)

> it completely?  Is it in 4.10?

Yes.  It is in 4.10.  You just go into View and delete the attachment.
It's very useful!

Mike

---

From: Jeff <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 1 Jul 1999 12:37:55 -0500 (CDT)

On Thu, 1 Jul 1999, Bino  Gopal wrote:

> want to delete the huge file from my inbox BUT I want to save the
> nice text part of the message...

You could forward it to yourself and make to to not include the
attachment. I do this quite often, even for plain text message bodies
that I want to summarize.

> Thanks in advance for any help/ideas/support!

Welcome!

-jeff
-- 
   .~.   | Jeff Schaller
   /V\   | Phone = (316) 946-7255, Fax = x2809
  // \\  | HP-UX Client/Server
 /(   )\ | I do not speak for the
  <`~'>  | Bombardier Aerospace Group.

---

From: Bino Gopal <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 1 Jul 1999 14:03:17 -0400 (EDT)

Well, the problem is that this doesn't preserve the original headers for
sorting in whatever folder I have the messages in (right?).  I've tried
it, and I don't like how the original headers aren't there (for sorting
and selecting messages and such).  Thanks for the idea though.

							BINO

---

From: Bino Gopal <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 1 Jul 1999 14:06:09 -0400 (EDT)

Ok, I was afraid of that.  Given that the acct that has 3.95 on it is not
going to be upgraded soon, and so I'm stuck with it, do I take this to
mean that there's no other way to do what I want?!

Anyone know of even an add-on program that I can get to do this?  (Hmm, I
guess if I was feeling really ambitious, I could go get the source and
compile it for Solaris and run it just for myself...I'm allowed to do
that, right?)

							BINO

---

From: Scott Leibrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 1 Jul 1999 11:18:28 -0700 (PDT)

> Yes.  It is in 4.10.  You just go into View and delete the attachment.
 
Actually, it's a little more complicated than that.  After going into the
view message section in 4.10 and pressing D to delete the message, you
have to save the message to a folder (the folder it's in will work) to
preserve the changes.  That's the only way of "expunging" the attachment.

---

From: Scott Leibrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 1 Jul 1999 11:20:38 -0700 (PDT)

Yes, of course you can get a version of Pine to use for yourself, unless
your account's policies prohibit that.  You may even be able to find a
precompiled binary for your OS on ftp.cac.washington.edu if you're lucky.

As for 3.95, I no longer use it, but I suspect you may be able to turn on
full headers and set the include headers in reply flag before you forward
yourself the message.  This will at least let you see the full headers as
they were before you forwarded it.

---

From: Satya <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 2 Jul 1999 00:10:13 +0530 (IST)

> file from my inbox BUT I want to save the nice text part of the message...

i'm on 4.04, and extremely new to this mailing list. i think you can
Export the message, after pressing full (H)eaders so you get the headers
too. i just tried it and it seems to work.

-- 
Satya.
Freelance website designer and CGI/Perl programmer.
http://satyaonline.cjb.net/

---

From: Freda B Birnbaum <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 1 Jul 1999 17:37:00 -0400 (EDT)

> unwanted text?  Can anyone think of a more elegant (and quicker) solution?

How about forwarding the message to yourself, but eliminating the unwanted
stuff from the forwarded message, and then deleting the original?  You can
even make the Subject: be whatever you ewant.

(I'm going to go try this now... just got something like that!)

Freda Birnbaum, [email-masked]
"Call on God, but row away from the rocks"

---

From: Jessica Rasku <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 1 Jul 1999 22:39:41 -0700 (PDT)

> mean that there's no other way to do what I want?!

	I have an idea...  Lets think about this a bit though...

> compile it for Solaris and run it just for myself...I'm allowed to do

	Pine would work fine, and if there are no limitations for doing
that on the system you are using, then you can do that.  Another thing
that you may be able to do is:

save the message in it's own folder (this is just to make things easier
	and safer, you won't clobber all your messages if you mess up
	like I'm sure we are are prone to if we are doing something a
	little odd),
go into your shell and open that folder in your favorite editor
delete (in that editor), the attachment
save the resulting file
return to pine, and you should have what you want

	I have done things similar to this myself with messages that have
inline html code attached which isn't aware that the message is being sent
quoted printable (the href=" (I think that's it) crashes Pine's quoted
printable decoder, and is very inpolite about what the problem REALLY is
(it displays the up to the block that it failed on, and then complains
that it doesn't understand)).  This should work, but caution is
deffinately warented, always ensure that you have at least one backup
before doing this...

							Jessica

---

From: Bino Gopal <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 2 Jul 1999 10:31:52 -0400 (EDT)

On Thu, 1 Jul 1999, Jessica Rasku wrote:

<snip>
> deffinately warented, always ensure that you have at least one backup

Thanks for the tip Jessica, but the thing is when you try to do something
like this with a 1MB message, it gets hard to load into the editor, and it
takes a long time, and then you have to wait to select all the text, and
it's basically a big pain...I guess I should have made the 'elegant' part
more clear. :)  And it was a lot harder the first time or two, _before_ I
saved the message into it's own folder--quite a pain to find it, know what
I mean?! :PP

In any case, the thing that does work the best is to export the message,
which saves the main text, and NOT any of the attachments!  I had never
noticed that particular 'feature' until Satya suggested it (thanks Satya!
:)  This also preserves the *original* headers, so you can sort based on
those, and not the ones you create by forwardig it.  Of course, this is
only relevant if you're not running 4.10 yet, but I think there's still a
number of people who might find it useful.

Now the only thing I want to figure out is to see if there might be a way
for Pine to save the *ORIGINAL* arrival date of the message--in other
words, the FIRST time it hits any of my folders...if you know where I'm
going with this, feel free to reply, but I think I'll expound more in
another email.  Big shot out to all those who helped out by replying!
Thanks much!

							BINO