Subject: Mailagent package broken?

From: Erik van der Meulen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Sep 1996 16:42:31 +0200

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

I have made several attempts to install the mailagent_3.44-6.deb package 
from the stable tree without much success.
After installation, the command mailagent -I (for user installation) results 
in:

  bash: /usr/bin/mailagent: Permission denied

Mannually adding more rights seems to solve that, but the log file keeps 
complaining:

  mailagent[6]: starting SAVE /var/spool/mail/ben
  mailagent[6]: WARNING could not lock /var/spool/mail/ben
  mailagent[6]: WARNING was unable to get any lock on /var/spool
  /mail/ben
  mailagent[6]: ERROR could not save mail in /var/spool/mail/ben

and I can't seem to deal with that.
I am not really sure if I am overlooking some simple thing or if there is 
something wrong with the package. So I wander I anyone has managed to get 
this package working? Maybe I should divert to an older version?

Any suggestions appreciated.

Erik van der Meulen <[email-masked]>

---

From: Behan Webster <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Sep 1996 15:55:19 -0400

>   mailagent[6]: ERROR could not save mail in /var/spool/mail/ben

Are you running mailagent as a user?  Because if you are it's
probably a problem with the permissions on /var/spool/mail.
Normal users shouldn't be able to create files in this directory
(arguable security risk).

Unfortunately to do mail file locking one must make a .lock file
in the same directory as the mail file you are locking. This means
having write access to /var/spool/mail.  Currently in debian (if
memory serves) only root and mail have write permission to this
directory.

If this is the problem, one fix (albeit one that causes an
arguable security risk) is to do a:

chmod o+w /var/spool/mail

Hope this helps!

Behan

-- 
Behan Webster
[email-masked]
(613) 224-7547