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Re: Help with Lock Failures Using /etc/procmailrc

2002-09-29 15:12:58
"Mike McCandless" <michael(_at_)prismbiz(_dot_)com> writes:
I am using procmail v3.22 on RH7.2.  I recently switched from having an
individual .procmailrc in each $HOME directory to one in
/etc/procmailrc.  I invoke procmail from postfix with the mailbox
command '/usr/bin/procmail -m /etc/procmailrc'.  Within procmailrc, I am
using Email Sanitizer and lastly Spamassassin.  I check the log file
that procmail is writing to (in my $HOME directory) and keep seeing:

Lock failure on /var/spool/mail/michael.lock
...
The permissions on the /var/spool/mail directory is:
drwxrwxr-x    2 root     mail         1024 Oct  1 14:09 /var/spool/mail


If those are the permissions set by Redhat when the machine was installed,
then you _may_ be able completely ignore the failure to create lockfiles,
as Redhat should have verified that all the program that access the
mailspool all use fcntl()-style kernel locking.  That's fine, but you
need to remember that you can't access/munge your mailspool from shell
scripts as they have no way to apply kernel locks.  For most people, that's
not a requirement, so it may be alright for you.

Note that if you export that directory to other systems via NFS, then
*you* need to verify that all the programs are using fcntl() locking
and that all the systems having working lock daemons.


If that isn't fine and you need to be able to create dotlock lockfiles,
then you should consider changing the permissions on the mailspool to
1777.  Note that there are tradeoffs in such a change, so you shouldn't
do it 'just because'.  Indeed, the RPM system may try to change it back
to 775 in certain cases...


Philip Guenther
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