> NFS mounting the mail partition tends to result in general
> chaos. Remote file locking on Solaris may be solid, but from the
> problems with pine I'd say it isn't.
file locking is fine. it works even better under Solaris 2.5, this is
due to a newer version of NFS (v4).
> Elm and I assume /bin/mail (sendmail's local mailer) use lockfiles
> as well as file locking. I would place a bet that Pine doesn't use
> lockfiles or at least does a crap job of it. (Washington Uni have a
> habit of releasing rather dodgey software - wu-ftpd comes to mind)
this is true elm can be compiled with flock, lockf, fcntl or dot-file
style mailbox locking, and was compiled with dot-file and fcntl file
locking when i used to work there. /bin/mail uses both dot-file and
fcntl locking (this is Solaris we're talking about here).
> Hmm, a quick trace of pine shows it does try to write some sort of
> lockfile. However it doesnt have the permissions to write to
> /var/mail. Pine was installed sgid mail, but that was removed when I
> pointed out any file readable by group mail could be viewed (ie
> everyones mail).
thats because it isnt designed to run on a properly configured System
V system, it is designed to run under BSD or atleast thats what it was
origionally designed for, its been hacked to compile on other systems
now.. but that doesnt mean it takes intricacies of those systems into
account..
> Making /var/mail world writeable is not a good idea either.
exactly...
> On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if pine doesn't even
> attempt to lock the inbox when it should.
it doesnt do proper locking no...
> How about running imapd on snowgum?
it couldnt handle the load... last time i checked it was doing enough
as is, but it aint my call anymore.. once you open imapd or pop on the
server everyone will start using eudora n stuff off of it.. eek!
Matt
--
#!/bin/sh
echo '16i[q]sa[ln0=aln100%Pln100/snlbx]sbA0D3F204445524F42snlbxq'|dc;exit
Matthew Keenan Data Network Admin Information Technology Division
University of Technology Sydney Australia
It's nice to be in a position where people apologize because they
assume there's humor in your work, based on past experience,
but they're not sure where it is. -- Rob Pike