procmail locking

Hi all,

I experience a strange locking problem with procmail that drives me
nuts. I would like to use /var/spool/mail/xxxx.lock as lock file, but
do get a message saying that this lock could not be created:

procmail: Bypassed locking "/var/spool/mail/xxxx.lock"
procmail: Assigning "LASTFOLDER=/var/spool/mail/xxxxxl"
procmail: Opening "/var/spool/mail/xxxxx"
procmail: Acquiring kernel-lock

However, the permissions on the directories /var and /var/spool/mail
are 0755 and 01777, so that it should be possible to create the lock
file:

drwxr-xr-x 14 root root 360 2005-06-20 15:16 var/
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2005-06-20 15:14 mail -> spool/mail/

I can create any file in this directory with the ordinary user
priviledges (e.g. using touch).

Is this a problem with procmail or with my distro (SuSE 9.3)?

> procmail -v
procmail v3.22 2001/09/10
Locking strategies: dotlocking, fcntl(), flock()
Default rcfile: $HOME/.procmailrc
Your system mailbox: /var/spool/mail/xxxxx

Thanks for your help

Re: procmail locking

ultimatespamheap@yahoo.com wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I experience a strange locking problem with procmail that drives me
> nuts. I would like to use /var/spool/mail/xxxx.lock as lock file, but
> do get a message saying that this lock could not be created:
>
> procmail: Bypassed locking "/var/spool/mail/xxxx.lock"
> procmail: Assigning "LASTFOLDER=/var/spool/mail/xxxxxl"
> procmail: Opening "/var/spool/mail/xxxxx"
> procmail: Acquiring kernel-lock
>
> However, the permissions on the directories /var and /var/spool/mail
> are 0755 and 01777, so that it should be possible to create the lock
> file:
>
> drwxr-xr-x 14 root root 360 2005-06-20 15:16 var/
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2005-06-20 15:14 mail -> spool/mail/
>
> I can create any file in this directory with the ordinary user
> priviledges (e.g. using touch).
>
> Is this a problem with procmail or with my distro (SuSE 9.3)?
>
>
>>procmail -v
>
> procmail v3.22 2001/09/10
> Locking strategies: dotlocking, fcntl(), flock()
> Default rcfile: $HOME/.procmailrc
> Your system mailbox: /var/spool/mail/xxxxx
>
> Thanks for your help
>

/var/spool/mail would not permit the user to create a file. If I am not
misstaken, /var/spool/mail has a group sgid to allow mail to create
mailboxes.

You can use a fixed lock by specifying it in the recipe
:0: /tmp/my.lock
* sometest
$DEFAULT

Ak

Re: procmail locking

>/var/spool/mail would not permit the user to create a file.

This is strange -- I can create any file with e.g. "touch
username.lock" in /var/spool/mail. What would prevent procmail from
doing the same?

Re: procmail locking

ultimatespamheap@yahoo.com wrote:

>>/var/spool/mail would not permit the user to create a file.
>
>
> This is strange -- I can create any file with e.g. "touch
> username.lock" in /var/spool/mail. What would prevent procmail from
> doing the same?
>

The only way to findout is for you to enable detailed loging VERBOSE=yes.
Then see what information is contained in the log.

Ak