Hi,

>> When telnetting into localhost on the pop port (with the precompiled
>> binary of qpopper found at macbsd.co in contrib/unix installed), I get th=
e
>> following error:
>> [...]
>> pass mypass
>> -ERR System error, can't open temporary file, do you own it?
>> +OK Pop server at otaku.users.netset.com signing off.
>> Connection closed by foreign host.

>The only way I was able to get it to work was to
>  chmod 1777 /var/mail
>Note: You will have to be root to do this. For those of you who use
>letters for permissions, /var/mail should be  'drwxrwxrwt'
>This makes /var/mail world appendable.

1777 means world writeable, with only the owner (or root) being able to
delete a file. That means that your mailbox is safe, but anybody can
deposit junk in /var/mail. Less elegant than one would desire.

>A long time ago, I posed the question of why we have to make /var/mail
>world writeable when you do not have to on BSDI.  No one ever answered.

Under which UID does qpopper run? If it runs as root, then it should be
able to write in /var/mail when it has 0755 permissions. If it runs as
"daemon" or something similar, it might work if you

1. chgrp the binary to group "mail" (create it if not present);
2. chgrp /var/mail and it's contents to group "mail" as well;
3. change the permissions of /var/mail to 0775;
4. change the permissions of the mailboxes to 0660.

Note: I'm not sure if this works under NetBSD, but it is worth trying (I've
seen this kind of setup under several other OSes). Also, some tips may be
carefully hidden in the qpopper documentation :-)

Good luck!

          Nico van Eikema Hommes

--
  Dr. N.J.R. van Eikema Hommes     Computer-Chemie-Centrum
  hommes@ccc.uni-erlangen.de       Universitaet Erlangen-Nuernberg
  Phone:    +49-(0)9131-856532     Naegelsbachstr. 25
  FAX:      +49-(0)9131-856566     D-91052 Erlangen, Germany