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Why is softlink / hardlink "BOGUS" ?

1996-05-26 00:44:54

 (I'm not subscribed, so please CC replies to me and mail me whether
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 Hi.

quoting from the man page :

If /var/spool/mail/$LOGNAME is a bogus mailbox (i.e. does not belong  to  the
recipient,  is  unwritable,  is  a symbolic link or is a hard link), procmail
will upon startup try to rename it into a file  starting  with `BOGUS.'


 I have run into the following problem :

 When I was doing backup, first I made copy of the tree using "cp -al",
because I wanted to delete from this "tree" files that I didn't want
to have backed up, and leave the ones I wanted to have backed up.
(cp -al copies trees using hardlinks)

      But !

 When I was doing this, I noticed that my mailbox shrunk to zero ! (as
pine told me). After a while I found out that procmail was causing it.

  Why can't I have a hardlink ?

  Why can't I have a softlink ?

  When I found out, I made a hardlink from BOGUS.PLk back to my
mailbox. This caused mail delivery to stall the moment more mail came
for me, and procmail wrote to /var/log/maillog :

May 25 21:50:25 enrico procmail[7912]: Renamed bogus "/var/spool/mail/honza" 
into "/var/spool/mail/BOGUS.PLk"
May 26 02:15:14 enrico last message repeated 3075789 times
May 26 02:15:17 enrico sendmail[7911]: VAA07833: to=<honza(_at_)ied(_dot_)com>, 
ctladdr=<honza(_at_)ied(_dot_)com> (500/499), delay=04:44:33, xdelay=04:31:44, 
mailer=local, stat=Can't create output: Error 0
May 26 02:15:18 enrico sendmail[7911]: VAA07833: CAA07911: postmaster notify: 
Can't create output: Error 0
May 26 02:15:18 enrico sendmail[7911]: CAA07911: SYSERR(uucp): Error writing 
control file tfCAA07911: No space left on device
May 26 02:15:24 enrico sendmail[7913]: VAA07913: from=root, size=275720812, 
class=0, pri=0, nrcpts=1, relay=root(_at_)localhost



         Thanx,

                Jan

PS: until I find better solution, please mail me a patch to remove the
checking for soft/hard link. I'm currently using procmail-3.10. Thanx !

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