SUMMARY: mail problem

From: Murat Balci <balci_at_baum01.ege.edu.tr>
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 22:13:53 +0400 (EET DST)

Thanx to Norman Wilson, immediately send the answer, and I solved the
problem. Its as follows ;

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 95 15:01:25 -0400
From: Norman Wilson <norman_at_hprc.utoronto.ca>
To: balci_at_baum01.ege.edu.tr
Subject: mail problem

On many systems these days, binmail arranges to run as the user to whom
mail is being delivered, for various safety reasons; hence if that user
can't write in /var/spool/mail, the lockfile can't be created and mail
can't be delivered.

To allow this to work, but prevent users from removing others' mailboxes,
set the sticky bit on /var/spool/mail:

# chmod +t /var/spool/mail
# ls -lLd /var/spool/mail
drwxrwxrwt 2 root 1024 Aug 15 14:57 /var/spool/mail
#
(notice the `t' in the mode. In numbers this is mode 01777.)

The sticky bit on a directory means that anyone may create a file,
but no one except the super-user may remove (or rename) a file he
doesn't own.

The flag is useful to prevent havoc in /tmp as well.

Norman Wilson
University of Toronto
norman_at_hprc.utoronto.ca
Received on Tue Aug 15 1995 - 21:32:40 NZST

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