Re: Problem with mail box in /var while installing

[Ali Akcaagac <ali akcaagac stud fh-wilhelmshaven de>]

On 2001.07.19 16:59:37 +0200 "Chausson, Cedric (FR - Neuilly)" wrote:
> When I installed balsa I had a problem. At one point during the install you
> are asked to approve the location of different mailboxes including one which
> is in somewhere in the /var. When I did not change the setting and clicked
> ok I got an error code errno and it told me there was a problem creating the
> mailbox inside the var hierarchy. Finally I specified my home directory as
> the recipient for that mailbox and installation went through ok.
> 
> My question is how detrimental can be the fact that I located that mailbox
> in my home directory instead as in the /var ? I am asking myself this
> question especially cause I want to use procmail to filter my messages and
> I'm wondering if my current setup will have an effect on using procmail
> successfully. Any ideas ?
> 
> Also if this is detrimental in any way, how can I solve this problem ? Maybe
> a change in the permission settings of /var ?

yes,

/var/spool/mail/<filewithyourusername>

is the common usualy mailbox on unix systems. all incomming mail, either
localy sent or remotely sent to you will be stored into this folder and
file. of course you have read the readme's and faq's that come with balsa
and you already figured out that you need to follow the clear instructions
described there. so you need to do this as root.

cd /var/spool
chmod 1777 mail
cd /var/spool/mail
chmod 600 <filewithyourusername>
chown <yourusername>.users <filewithyourusername>

your ~/mail directory contains files named sentbox, outbox, draftbox
and all the other filenames, if you use procmail to split things up.

here an example to clear things.

bash-2.05$ ls -l mail/
total 26340
-rw-------    1 galaxy   users     6705259 Jul 19 17:15 balsa
-rw-------    1 galaxy   users           0 Jul 19 17:07 draftbox
-rw-------    1 galaxy   users     1039604 Jul 19 17:15 evolution
-rw-------    1 galaxy   users      467164 Jul 19 17:07 ewe
-rw-------    1 galaxy   users     4645964 Jul 19 17:07 galeon
-rw-------    1 galaxy   users       13237 Jul 19 17:07 guestbook
-rw-------    1 galaxy   users        3398 Jul 19 17:07 noten
-rw-------    1 galaxy   users           0 Jul 19 17:16 outbox
-rw-------    1 galaxy   users    13505432 Jul 19 17:16 sentbox
-rw-------    1 galaxy   users           0 Jul 19 17:07 trash
-rw-------    1 galaxy   users      571063 Jul 19 17:07 vim
bash-2.05$

thats how my mailbox in my homedir looks like.

bash-2.05$ ls -l /var/spool/mail/
total 11528
-rw-------    1 galaxy   users    11801361 Jul 19 17:15 galaxy
bash-2.05$ 

and thats how my spool dir looks like. if you want to know how
to make a .procmailrc file for your inbox to split them up on
your system then you may use the attached file. its for sure not
the best example but it works for me and was quickly made.

hope i was helpfull to you.

-- 
Name....: Ali Akcaagac
Status..: Student Of Computer & Economic Science
E-Mail..: mailto:ali.akcaagac@stud.fh-wilhelmshaven.de
WWW.....: http://www.fh-wilhelmshaven.de/~akcaagaa

.procmailrc