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From: eric@cinnet.com (Eric Bardes)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.elm
Subject: Re: EMERGENCY_MBOX filter problem
Message-ID: <1991May9.040222.10426@cinnet.com>
Date: 9 May 91 04:02:22 GMT
References: <1991May6.175240.19159@milton.u.washington.edu>
Organization: Cincinnati Network, Cinti. OH
Lines: 18

From article <1991May6.175240.19159@milton.u.washington.edu>, by jjcrump@milton.u.washington.edu (James Crump):
>                                                       the incoming
> message is dumped into my home directory in a file called
> EMERGENCY_MBOX. 

I had the same problem and figured it out yesterday.  Small world :)
The mail spool directory was owned by root, group mail, mode 775.  The 
filter program was running without any special permissions.  Therefore,
it could not create the lock file which keeps other mail processes from
writing to that mailbox.  I presume your other folders are in or under 
your home directory.  Filter could and was able to create lock files there.

The cure - choose one:
    1)  Have your sysadm change filter to run setgid mail.
    2)  Change the mail directory to have a mode of 777.
 __
|_   _ .  _  Eric E. Bardes, User           eric@cinnet.com
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