I just installed mutt on a Unix box I started setting up recently, so
I'm pretty new to both mutt and Unix. I have six questions:
1) When I tried to connect and download mail, I got a 'can't lock
/var/mail/bob' message. I dug through various documents and found a
reference in the FAQ to dotlocking. I have no idea what dotlocking
is, but I tried the suggested solution and it had no effect. I think
part of the problem is that there are subtle but significant
differences between various forms of Unix, and I don't know enough
about how mutt works to make adjustments for FreeBSD. At any rate, I
got mutt to work by setting the group permissions on /var/mail to rw.
Since the directory owner is root and the group is mail, and the
group for mutt-dotlock is also mail, I don't know how mutt could
write to a file in the directory unless I reset the mail group
permissions to allow writing. The FAQ says that mutt-dotlock is
supposed to work around the permissions issue in a way that prevents
the security problems caused by changing the permissions. So my
question is; does giving the mail group write permission on /var/mail
create a security hole?
2) And the next question is; what is dotlocking?
3) And while I'm at it, what is a .forward file? They are mentioned
in the FAQ, along with the suggestion that I examine one to find out
about it. I did so, but I'm not much wiser. I assume it forwards
something to /usr/home/bob, but what and why?
4) There's a very garbled explanation of spoolfiles in one of the
configuration files. Is a spoolfile a file that stores mail
temporarily after the pop client downloads it and before the
mailreader loads it? Same concept as a printer spool?
5) I need to set up something to transfer mail from mutt to my ISP's
smtp server. I know nothing about this sort of program. Does anyone
have any suggestions? The only functionality I need is uploading my
mail.
Bob Hall
Know thyself? Absurd direction!
Bubbles bear no introspection. -Khushhal Khan Khatak
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