Try 'chmod 1777 /dev/mail' (as root)

		David/abs

    "Its a bright sunny california day outside, and you're inside."
    "And your point would be...?"


On Tue, 15 Jul 1997, Mason Loring Bliss wrote:

> I posted this to the netbsd-help list yesterday, but haven't received
> anything back as yet... Since I'm dealing with a stock 06/01/1997 -current
> snapshot, maybe other folks have had this problem as well, and solved
> it...? (Or maybe I'm just blindingly clueless, as was the case with my not
> finding uucp suite binaries. Heh.)
> 
> A friend of mine suggested that maybe I need to run lockd, but that seems
> to be used primarily in NFS setups, which doesn't include me. He then said
> that there were a few ways files could be locked, and everything needed to
> agree on the method. Since I'm using stock software, a discrepancy seems
> unlikely to me... So, I'm left sans clue. Here's the message I posted:
> 
> 
> 
> I'm running a fairly plain-vanilla NetBSD 1.2 system (Mac68K, 06/01/1997
> -current snapshot) and I'm having some trouble with mail.
> 
> In the following example, I seemed to successfully delete a bit of mail,
> but on quitting I get the "Unable to lock mailbox: Permission denied"
> message, and when I run mail again, the message I deleted is back and not
> marked as being read.
> 
> 	& h
> 	>   1 mason                 Sun Jul 13 20:31  23/847   "testing 2"
> 	& d 1
> 	& h
> 	No applicable messages
> 	& q
> 	Unable to lock mailbox: Permission denied
> 	mason$ mail
> 	Mail version 8.1 6/6/93.  Type ? for help.
> 	"/var/mail/mason": 1 message 1 new
> 	>N  1 mason                 Sun Jul 13 20:31  23/847   "testing 2"
> 	& d 1
> 	& q
> 	Unable to lock mailbox: Permission denied
> 	mason$
> 
> Also, when I try elm (version 2.4 PL25), it tells me:
> 
> 	Waiting to read mailbox while mail is being received: attempt #1
> 
> and then, after a number of tries:
> 
> 	Giving up after 7 iterations.
> 
> 	Please try to read your mail again in a few minutes.
> 
> I'm not sure why this is all happening... I'd love some advice! I haven't
> changed anything that I'm aware of in the mail system... The mailbox files
> seem to be owned properly:
> 
> 	mason$ cd /var/mail
> 	mason$ ll
> 	total 25
> 	-rw-------  1 mason  wheel    847 Jul 13 20:31 mason
> 	-rw-------  1 root   wheel  24390 Jul 14 02:08 root
> 	mason$
> 
> The other odd thing is that I can't seem to delete the file manually... The
> /var/mail directory is rwxr-xr-x. When I change it to be world-writable,
> the problem with 'mail' goes away, but the problem with 'elm' remains.
> However, if the directory was initially not world-readable, then I don't
> want to make it world-readable anyway, do I? I'm going to assume that
> making the directory world-writable is *not* my solution, at least until I
> hear otherwise.
> 
> Thank you in advance for the help.
> 
> --
>         Mason Loring Bliss    /\    mason@acheron.middleboro.ma.us
>       PGPKeyID: 0x25B3D5B5   /()\   awake ? sleep() : dream();
> <barbaric>YAWP!</barbaric>  /    \  http://genesis.tiac.net/~mason
>