Ultrix mail fun

[Karl Reuss]

In article <1991Feb15.161545.993 at hollie.rdg.dec.com> jch at dyfed.rdg.dec.com (John Haxby) writes:
>./usr/bin/mail is setgid kmem because is bases lock time-outs on the load
>average which is gets from /dev/kmem. [I know this is wrong, it'll be fixed
>in a possible future release] I don't believe binmail checks the
>permissions on /usr/spool/mail (or whatever the alias is), but it is fairly
>careful about the permissions and properties of files that it tries to drop
>mail in. 

What's always bothered me about Ultrix /usr/bin/mail is that after it does
all of the wonderfull checking when opening a mailbox, it never checks
for errors after a write.  Can you guess what happens if your disk is 100 full ?
/usr/bin/mail may never write a line of your message, but it exits normally, 
sendmail never sees there is a problem, and your mail gets black holed with
no one being informed.

-Karl Reuss