Newsgroups: news.admin
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: strange problem with postnews(1)
Message-ID: <1989Sep5.200248.28009@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <69000004@sts>
Date: Tue, 5 Sep 89 20:02:48 GMT

In article <69000004@sts> roy@sts.sts.UUCP writes:
>I have a strange problem with the postnews(1) which comes with C-news...
>bash$ relaynews: can't create lock temporary `/var/news/LOCKTMa05456' (Permission denied)

This one is common enough, and odd enough, that we probably ought to put it
in the documentation.  What this means is that either (a) relaynews is not
setuid to the same uid that owns the $NEWSCTL directory, or (b) you have
not run subst properly and various parts of C News disagree on where the
directories are.  (The single commonest cause of (b) is changing the
"config" file without making corresponding changes elsewhere.  When
relaynews sees directory names in environment variables that differ from
the ones it knows about (via the config stuff in the C code), it decides
that something funny is going on and it had better renounce setuid
privileges.)
-- 
V7 /bin/mail source: 554 lines.|     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
1989 X.400 specs: 2200+ pages. | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu