ELM on IRISES (No write acces in /usr/mail ?)

[Bill Silvert]

In article <5079 at unlisys.in-berlin.de> rot at unlisys.in-berlin.de (Robert Rothe) writes:

[discussion about lock files]

>But why this ? is there no setgid() available, or doesn't it work ?

I've just installed ELM on a 4D/25 as well as on a Stardent, and there
seem to be lock problems.  Even though ELM runs sgid as mail and the
mail directory has the correct group and permissions, ELM cannot create
the lock files (which it tries to do in /usr/mail).  The solution which
worked for me was to change the permissions on /usr/mail from 775 to
3777 (rwxrwxr-x to rwxrwsrwt), which seems very common on Suns, although
I don't understand why (by the way, mail with exactly the same
premissions has no such problems).

Somehow it seems that setgid() doesn't work right.  Syd suggested that
perhaps it should be setegid(), but I'm no expert on this stuff.


-- 
William Silvert, Habitat Ecology Division, Bedford Inst. of Oceanography
P. O. Box 1006, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, CANADA B2Y 4A2.  Tel. (902)426-1577
UUCP=..!{uunet|watmath}!dalcs!biomel!bill
BITNET=bill%biomel%dalcs at dalac	InterNet=bill%biomel at cs.dal.ca