| Tested "simple fileserver", but I am getting this kind of
| error msgs to logfile:
|
| ------
| formail: formail: cannot open
| procmail: Error while writing to "formail"
| procmail: Rescue of unfiltered data succeeded
| >From hilonen Thu Nov 9 03:02:08 1995
| Subject: send roster
| Folder: (cat; cat $FILES) |$SENDMAIL -oi -t 746
| biff failed: cannot locate your tty: ttyname() for file descriptor 2
returned NULL
My guesses:
1. formail is not in your $PATH. Define a PATH near the top of your
.procmailrc that includes the directory where formail is found, or call
formail by its full absolute path.
2. The action line where biff fails contains a character from $SHELLMETAS
and thus calls a shell; it needs to, because pipes one process to another.
Your shell probably has a startup file that calls biff, and biff needs a
tty, and the background process delivering your mail has no tty attached
to its stderr.
Most likely your $SHELL is csh or a csh derivative, and you have an invo-
cation of biff in your .cshrc. The best thing to do is to wrap that call
to biff in an if structure that tests whether stderr is a terminal and
doesn't biff if it isn't.