Problem with /bin/bellmail on AIX 3.1

[Eldon Chan ~]

This should be a very simple and some of you might have encountered before.
I was using the standard .cf file from IBM and have my /usr/spool/mail
mounted from
a fileserver.  We shares our /usr/spool/mail directory among all our
workstations.
I tried to send a message to another local user on the same NIS (YP)
database. Below is the verbose
output that I got. It appeared to me that bellmail has problem writing
to a NFSed directory. It didn't help
even if I gave root access to the workstation on the fileserver.
I umounted the /usr/spool/mail and the message went fine.

The solution I am using now is to forward all the mail messages
(including local message) to the mail
server.  It also seems working fine since it is not using /bin/bellmail at all.

Any pointers and ideas are welcome.

Thanks

Eldon Chan
------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------

cad610 267> mail -v bsriniv
Subject: test
ignore
.
Cc:
echan... setsender: uid/gid = 1555/1550
bsriniv... Connecting to .local...
bsriniv... Connecting to  (local)...
bsriniv... openmailer: DefUid 1, DefGid 1
bsriniv... openmailer: set ctladdr uid/gid 1555/1550
bsriniv... execve: uid = 1555, gid = 1550
bellmail: cannot append to /usr/spool/mail/bsriniv
Mail saved in /home/unx/echan/dead.letter
bsriniv... unknown mailer error 1