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Date:      Tue, 1 Dec 1998 00:04:42 -0500 (EST)
From:      "Crist J. Clark" <cjc@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com>
To:        jerryr@ComCAT.COM (Jerry)
Cc:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Pine inbox "Read Only"
Message-ID:  <199812010504.AAA05183@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.4.02A.9811302302020.24898-100000@uw> from Jerry at "Nov 30, 98 11:03:12 pm"

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Jerry wrote,
> > > > Assuming that pine lives in /usr/local/bin:
> > > > 
> > > > 	chgrp mail /usr/local/bin/pine
> > > > 	chmod g+s /usr/local/bin/pine
> > > 
> > > I ran these as root and made no difference, when I ran as user I got this
> > > error:
> > > chgrp: you are not a member of group mail
> > 
> > You only run the above 2 commands as root. At this point, pine should
> > work fine.
> 
> ;)  didn't work!?!  I'm lost!

This is starting to get really old. I just installed pine4 /just/ to
test. OK, here's some permissions,

% ls -la /var/mail/
drwxrwxr-x   2 bin   mail      512 Oct 15 00:50 .
drwxr-xr-x  18 root  wheel     512 Oct  5 21:04 ..
-rw-------   1 cjc   cjc     33868 Nov 30 23:43 cjc
-rw-------   1 root  wheel       0 Nov  9 02:03 root
% ls -la `which pine`
-r-xr-xr-x  1 bin  bin  1814528 Nov 30 23:41 /usr/local/bin/pine

OK, as we see, and as I have been saying, the stuff about needing a
setuid or setgrp for the pine executable is incorrect. When the user
invokes pine, IT HAS THE USER'S PRIVILEGES. Since the user owns his
mailbox with read-write set, pine can do whatever it wants.

Now, another very valid point mentioned is that perhaps pine cannot
write to a temporary file in a certain location, gets confused, and
goes to read-only mode. Now, if the manpage is to be trusted, these
are the files pine uses,

       /usr/spool/mail/xxxx        Default  folder  for  incoming
				   mail.
       ~/mail                      Default   directory  for  mail
				   folders.
       ~/.addressbook              Default address book file.
       ~/.addressbook.lu           Default  address  book   index
				   file.
       ~/.pine-debug[1-4]          Diagnostic  log for debugging.
       ~/.pinerc                   Personal pine config file.
       ~/.newsrc                   News subscription/state  file.
       ~/.signature                Default signature file.
       ~/.mailcap                  Personal   mail   capabilities
				   file.
       ~/.mime.types               Personal  file  extension   to
				   MIME type mapping
       /etc/mailcap                System-wide  mail capabilities
				   file.
       /etc/mime.types             System-wide file ext. to  MIME
				   type mapping
       /usr/local/lib/pine.info    Local pointer to system admin-
				   istrator.
       /usr/local/lib/pine.conf    System-wide      configuration
				   file.
       /usr/local/lib/pine.conf.fixed  Non-overridable configura-
				       tion file.
       /tmp/.\usr\spool\mail\xxxx  Per-folder mailbox lock files.
       ~/.pine-interrupted-mail    Message which was interrupted.
       ~/mail/postponed-msgs       For postponed messages.
       ~/mail/sent-mail            Outgoing    message    archive
				   (FCC).
       ~/mail/saved-messages       Default destination for Saving
				   messages.

Now, the first one there is shaky. pine can seem to find
/var/mail/"user" without shell or environmental variables. (Still
please check for us what these variables are set to.) For the
remaining files, we see the only place pine wants to write is in your
home directory or in /tmp.

Do all users have permissions to write in '/tmp?' Do they all have
home directories they can write in?

Jerry, if you can answer all of these... I don't know what else to
ask... Course I spent the entire day trying to configure sendmail on
an IRIX, and when I finally called SGI, the 'engineer' and I decided
I'd found a genuine bug in the sendmail and I finally settled on a
kludge I figured out at about 11:00 AM but didn't find elegant. So,
I'm not /too/ into a mail debugging mood at the moment. (Then why did
I just install pine again?... bleeding masochist I am.)
-- 
Crist J. Clark                           cjclark@home.com

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