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Hi,

I am having trouble getting mutt to read my mail spool:

/var/spool/mail/username

Mail is delivered there by getmail / procmail and can be read by text
editor but not by mutt. I have specified the spool in ~/.bashrc as
well as in ~/.muttrc (covering all options).

I have tried various permissions on the spool but I am keen to set
these correctly. Can someone suggest the correct permissions?

Andrew

--
Among the tales of sorrow and of ruin that come down to us
from the darkness of those days there are yet some in which
amid weeping there is joy and under the shadow of death light
endures ...

andrew wrote:
> I am having trouble getting mutt to read my mail spool:
>
> /var/spool/mail/username
>
> Mail is delivered there by getmail / procmail and can be read by text
> editor but not by mutt. I have specified the spool in ~/.bashrc as
> well as in ~/.muttrc (covering all options).
>
> I have tried various permissions on the spool but I am keen to set
> these correctly. Can someone suggest the correct permissions?

your assumption that this is a permission problem isn't backed up by the
few sparse facts that you mention. in order for anyone here to help you,
you need to be much more specific: what is the error that mutt gives you?
how have you specified the spool file? can you read the spool when you type
c in mutt and then navigate to it or type its path manually?

--
Joost Kremers joostkremers@yahoo.com
Selbst in die Unterwelt dringt durch Spalten Licht
EN:SiS(9)

On Tue, 8 Oct 2007, andrew wrote:

>
> Hi,
>
> I am having trouble getting mutt to read my mail spool:
>
> /var/spool/mail/username
>
> Mail is delivered there by getmail / procmail and can be read by text
> editor but not by mutt. I have specified the spool in ~/.bashrc as
> well as in ~/.muttrc (covering all options).
>
> I have tried various permissions on the spool but I am keen to set
> these correctly. Can someone suggest the correct permissions?
>
> Andrew
>

chmod 1777 /var/spool/mail

The user spool is typically mode 600 and is owned normally by
username.mail

>

--

Cheers
Res

drats, forgot to add.....

On Tue, 9 Oct 2007, Res wrote:


> The user spool is typically mode 600 and is owned normally by

If its mode is 660 thats perfectly OK as well



--

Cheers
Res

On 2007-10-08, Joost Kremers <joostkremers@yahoo.com> wrote:
> andrew wrote:
>> I am having trouble getting mutt to read my mail spool:
>>
>> /var/spool/mail/username

[...]

> your assumption that this is a permission problem isn't backed up by the
> few sparse facts that you mention. in order for anyone here to help you,
> you need to be much more specific: what is the error that mutt gives you?

The error is:

---Mutt: (no mailbox)

> how have you specified the spool file?

I have specified the spool file in ~/.bashrc as follows:

MAIL=/var/spool/mail/andrew && export MAIL

I have tested this as follows:

bash-3.1$ env $MAIL
env: /var/spool/mail/andrew: Permission denied

> can you read the spool when you type
> c in mutt and then navigate to it or type its path manually?

No I cannot. The message is:

//var/spool/mail/andrew is not a mailbox.

My apologies for the briefness of my previous message.

Andrew


--
Among the tales of sorrow and of ruin that come down to us
from the darkness of those days there are yet some in which
amid weeping there is joy and under the shadow of death light
endures ...

On 2007-10-08, Res <res@ausics.net> wrote:
> On Tue, 8 Oct 2007, andrew wrote:
>
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I am having trouble getting mutt to read my mail spool:
>>
>> /var/spool/mail/username

[...]

>> I have tried various permissions on the spool but I am keen to set
>> these correctly. Can someone suggest the correct permissions?
>>
>> Andrew
>>
>
> chmod 1777 /var/spool/mail
>
> The user spool is typically mode 600 and is owned normally by
> username.mail

I have just had a look at the permissions, before I change them, as
perhaps I should have in my initiall investigation :-)

bash-3.1$ ls -l /var/spool/mail
total 24
-rw-rw---- 1 andrew mail 1652 2007-10-08 21:46 andrew
-rw-rw---- 1 root root 18293 2007-06-06 06:39 root

Andrew

--
Among the tales of sorrow and of ruin that come down to us
from the darkness of those days there are yet some in which
amid weeping there is joy and under the shadow of death light
endures ...

On 2007-10-08, andrew <andrew@ilium.invalid> wrote:
> On 2007-10-08, Joost Kremers <joostkremers@yahoo.com> wrote:

>> can you read the spool when you type
>> c in mutt and then navigate to it or type its path manually?

> No I cannot. The message is:

> //var/spool/mail/andrew is not a mailbox.

Ummm... maybe the text file is, in fact, not a mailbox, just like mutt
says.

Not every text file is a mailbox. It is possible that what should be
your mailbox somehow got corrupted and mutt can't make head nor tail
of it.

Are you familiar enough with what a mailbox looks like that you can
examine it with a text viewer or editor and see if it looks OK?

Jim

On 2007-10-09, Jim Diamond <Jim.Diamond@nomorespam.AcadiaU.ca> wrote:
> On 2007-10-08, andrew <andrew@ilium.invalid> wrote:
>> On 2007-10-08, Joost Kremers <joostkremers@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>> can you read the spool when you type
>>> c in mutt and then navigate to it or type its path manually?
>
>> No I cannot. The message is:
>
>> //var/spool/mail/andrew is not a mailbox.
>
> Ummm... maybe the text file is, in fact, not a mailbox, just like mutt
> says.
>
> Not every text file is a mailbox. It is possible that what should be
> your mailbox somehow got corrupted and mutt can't make head nor tail
> of it.
>
> Are you familiar enough with what a mailbox looks like that you can
> examine it with a text viewer or editor and see if it looks OK?

In fact there appears to be a problem. I post a slightly edited test
message below that shows a few 'unknowns' which I believe should not
be there (I have taken out email addresses / message ids):

From unknown Tue Oct 9 00:04:51 2007
Return-Path: <unknown>
Delivered-To: unknown
Received: from pop.gmail.com [...]
Delivered-To: andrew.[...]@gmail.com
Received: by 10.114.125.3 with SMTP id x3cs18509wac;
Mon, 8 Oct 2007 17:04:33 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.78.160.2 with SMTP id i2mr1[...]38;
Mon, 08 Oct 2007 17:04:31 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.78.174.17 with HTTP; Mon, 8 [...]31 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <3670f1b[...]25@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 10:04:31 +1000
From: "Andre[...]@gmail.com>
To: andrew[...]5@gmail.com
Subject: testtest
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline

test

I guess this could point to a getmail or procmail problem?

Andrew


--
Among the tales of sorrow and of ruin that come down to us
from the darkness of those days there are yet some in which
amid weeping there is joy and under the shadow of death light
endures ...

On 2007-10-08, Res <res@ausics.net> wrote:
> On Tue, 8 Oct 2007, andrew wrote:
>
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I am having trouble getting mutt to read my mail spool:
>>
>> /var/spool/mail/username

[...]

>> I have tried various permissions on the spool but I am keen to set
>> these correctly. Can someone suggest the correct permissions?

[...]

> chmod 1777 /var/spool/mail
>
> The user spool is typically mode 600 and is owned normally by
> username.mail

Thanks for your assistance. Just for the record I _finally_ solved the
issue by cutting the Gordian Knot :-) This is a single user machine so
I have changed the mail spool to $HOME/inbox and also eliminated
procmail from the recipe.

So now getmail delivers, mutt reads and msmtp sends; filtering
courtesy of Gmail. When things are a bit quieter I shall investigate
exactly I have been doing incorrectly in /var/spool/mail/andrew, but
in the meantime everything is running smoothly.

Thanks again for your, and others, assistance,

Andrew

--
Among the tales of sorrow and of ruin that come down to us
from the darkness of those days there are yet some in which
amid weeping there is joy and under the shadow of death light
endures ...

andrew <andrew@ilium.invalid> wrote:
> I have tried various permissions on the spool but I am keen to set
> these correctly. Can someone suggest the correct permissions?

The mail dir itself I always got as 1777, the mailbox files themselves
are: 660, with GROUP "mail" (owner: the user's ID itself) and,
most important: /usr/bin/procmail should have at least
2555 (setgid) with group "mail" again.

But - as far as I know - those ARE the defaults the slackware
packages COME with (procmail is even 4755, that is: setuid (root)
AND setgid (mail)).

Mutt normally runs as "the user", but needs the group mail to access
some lockfiles etc. The maildir, instead of being 1777, could possibly
also be "770", with group mail again.
--
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** Eef Hartman, Delft University of Technology, dept. EWI/TW **
** e-mail: E.J.M.Hartman@math.tudelft.nl, fax: +31-15-278 7295 **
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