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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbatt!pegasus!avi
From: avi@pegasus.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Another rmail problem in GNU emacs
Message-ID: <2939@pegasus.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 16-Feb-87 17:52:31 EST
Article-I.D.: pegasus.2939
Posted: Mon Feb 16 17:52:31 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 17-Feb-87 06:36:08 EST
Reply-To: avi@pegasus.UUCP (60021254-Avi E. Gross;LZ 3C-314;6241)
Organization: AT&T-IS Labs, Lincroft, NJ
Lines: 34
Summary: It expects /usr/mail to be publicly writeable!


Thanks to Karl Kleinpaste, I have GNU emacs up on a 3B20 running SV_R2.
I am using version 18.35. I have been laboring over the rmail package, by
changing parts of the distribution to hard-code for /usr/mail/$LOGNAME, and
have even manually inserted a "Mail: /usr/mail/avi" in the Babyl header of
my RMAIL mailbox. None of this worked, but I was able to get it to find new
mail in my ~/mbox by making it think that that was my mailbox source.

I finally decided to try changing /usr/mail to be publicly writeable, and
this fixed the problem nicely. Unfortunately, I don't think it is wise to
leave /usr/mail writeable by just anyone. My guess (from looking at the
ELISP) is that they are trying to remove my mailbox, and failing. If they
just tried to zero it, they would suceed in emptying my mail box, and could
go on and retrieve my mail. As it is, the package just tells me I have no
new mail.

The offending code is the C function Fdelete_file (AKA delete-file) in
fileio.c that insists (quite legitimately) on being able to delete a file by
unlinking it. I would prefer to not make myself the owner of /usr/mail or
running as "root" or "mail" all the time. An obvious patch is to try to
truncate a file when you can't delete it, but I am not sophisticated enough
in ELISP to do that yet. Tony Hansen and I tried a fix in the condition-case
exception handler, but that doesn't seem to have worked.

Has anybody else fixed this yet, and how? I wonder if anybody is running this
package who is not root! When I got my tar version from Karl, I couldn't even
take it apart unless I was suid root.

-=> Avi E. Gross @ AT&T Information Systems Laboratories (201) 576-6241
UUCP: suggested paths: [ihnp4, allegra, cbosg, rutgers, ...]!pegasus!avi
-- 
-=> Avi E. Gross @ AT&T Information Systems Laboratories (201) 576-6241
UUCP: suggested paths: [ihnp4, allegra, cbosg, topaz, ...]!pegasus!avi
ARPA:	agross@ru-green