Dear Managers,
I knew I could count on this list -- even on a Saturday!! I received the
solution from Erik Green <longshot_at_internet-connections.net> within
minutes!
He correctly suggested that the permissions on /dev/null had been changed
from their normal world read-writable status. Sure enough, I had
accidentally changed them while trying to zero out another users file.
Once I changed permissions on /dev/null back to crw-rw-rw- everything was
fine. Erik and I both are wondering why ELM and PINE need /dev/null but
they clearly do!
Erik also shared the following mini-script as a way to process those
messages left stranded in /tmp. He added that if anyone has a better way
to do this, he (and I) would love to know.
He wrote:
------------------------
I almost always use a
loop where I grep out and cut the destination address of each message, then
call mail or sendmail to send it on its way. Something like (using bash
or bourne shell):
for file in *
do
dest = `grep "To:" $file | cut -c4-60`
mail $dest <$file
done
...or thereabouts. This still takes some tweaking, because there
might be more than one "To:" in each message, or something like a CC:. You
could always mail the messages back to their senders, and request that they re-
send them to make sure they get to the right place....
-----------------------------
I wasn't able to use his script because I also screwed up ownership of the
files in /tmp, but it works for him. Needless to say, I've had better
weekends. Worse yet...all this grief was caused by me. Must be I'm due for
a vacation! My brain is getting fuzzy.
Thanks also go to:
Pam Woods <axsymgr_at_UAA.ALASKA.EDU>
Wesley Darlington <w.darlington_at_am.qub.ac.uk>
Debby Quayle
-------------------------*---------------------------
Debbora (Debby) Bartel Quayle
Asst. Dir.ITS, Technical Support Services/
Help Desk & E-mail Administration
Information Technology Services Department
Hamilton College (315) 859-4031 dquayle_at_hamilton.edu
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Received on Sun Dec 07 1997 - 20:40:44 NZDT