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From: robertl@cwi.nl
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Re: mailbox
Message-ID: <9009222055.AA00571@paling.cwi.nl>
Date: 22 Sep 90 20:55:20 GMT
References: <501@texhrc.UUCP>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 38


	> mailbox: Bad file number
	> mailbox: Bad file number
	> mailbox: Bad file number
	> mailbox: Bad file number

	> any ideas what's happening ??

We had that too. In our case 'fam' couldn't be launched by
'inetd' properly. Try executing '/usr/etc/fam' manually. It
will probably print some additional info as to what is going on
(in our case 'fam' couldn't open /dev/imon). You will probably be
ok if you can get 'fam' to work.

By the way : if you are using central mail services you should
consider doing something like :
	
	$ ln -s $HOME/.mail /usr/spool/mail/$LOGNAME
	$ mailbox -f $HOME/.mail

This is because every second or so 'fam' will do an 'ls -l' 
of the directory in which your mail-file is in. 
In our case we had +/- 15 users doing an ls -l in /usr/spool/mail 
(which has +/- 250 entries) resulting in a substantial load on 
the central mail server! Making a link to your mail-file from a 
small directory results in a lot less network traffic. 



Groetjes;

-- Robert van Liere

------------------------------------------------------------
Robert van Liere, Department of Interactive Systems,
Center for Mathematics and Computer Science (CWI)
Kruislaan 413,  1098 SJ  Amsterdam,  The Netherlands
robertl@cwi.nl