Problem with Fedora1 and ipop3d

[Tim Alberts]

On Thursday 22 April 2004 16:57, you wrote:
> Tim Alberts wrote:
> > I've learned that if I set the /var/spool/mail folder permission to 777,
> > I no longer get the following error.
> >
> > Mailbox Vulnerable - Directory /var/spool/mail must have 1777 protection
> >
> > It seems odd that something requires worldwriteable access to the
> > /var/spool/mail folder.
> >
> >
> > However, the main problem persists that if I use kmail to retrieve email
> > from the pop3 server, the /var/spool/mail/user email file gets written
> > with the
> >
> > message:
> >>From MAILER-DAEMON Thu Apr 22 11:50:17 2004
> >
> > Date: 22 Apr 2004 11:50:17 -0700
> > From: Mail System Internal Data <MAILER-DAEMON at localhost.localdomain>
> > Subject: DON'T DELETE THIS MESSAGE -- FOLDER INTERNAL DATA
> > Message-ID: <1082659817 at localhost.localdomain>
> > X-IMAP: 1082659816 0000000002
> > Status: RO
> >
> > This text is part of the internal format of your mail folder, and is not
> > a real message.  It is created automatically by the mail system software.
> > If deleted, important folder data will be lost, and it will be re-created
> > with the data reset to initial values.
> >
> > A few people have hinted that imapd writes this to a mail file to keep
> > track of which emails have been read.  How can this be happening if I
> > have the imapd disabled?
>
> As I said in an earlier posting, ipop3d is based on Crispin's c-client
> code.  So is imapd, so even though you have imapd disabled, the ipop3d
> may be inserting that message because it's done in the c-client bit.
>
> I just looked at the source code for imapd and ipop3d (for the
> terminally curious, specifically the imap-2000e version) and they both
> use the c-client "unix" driver for mailboxes.  That driver inserts the
> message, so now even the POP daemon inserts the IMAP housekeeping
> message.  Lovely.

It looks like you are correct.  However, I've been running a RedHat7.3 server 
for a couple years now with imap version 2001a-10 and never had the user mail 
files get imap access messages written to them.  The newer fedora1 runs imap 
version 2002d-3 and it seems to behave this way.  I guess this is not the 
source of my problem after all.

What I am currently facing is I keep getting error messages telling me to set 
/var/spool/mail folder to 777 access rather than the default 775.  When I set 
it to 777, I no longer get the message telling me to change it however I feel 
I would be a fool to leave a world accessible mail spool open. 

I am left with 2 questions:
1. Why is imapd/ipop3d telling me to set access to 777 on /var/spool/mail?
2. Why is email randomly dissappearing?

I am now looking at the second problem as possibly being a problem resulting 
from either my procmail recipe or I have installed ClamAV and am using 
TrashScan via procmail to scan for viruses.


> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> - Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
> - VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
> -                                                                    -
> -                He who laughs last thinks slowest.                  -
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------