Procmail permission
 

Hi,

I cannot make procmail to write to local mailbox.
get following error message:
procmail: Error while writing to "/var/mail/...
What is missing, permission ?
Thanks for assistance.
Cheers mike

Are you using this from Sendmail?

Hi jayjwa,

thanks for your reply.
I just use this:

:0
* ^Subject:.*Undelivered Mail.*Returned.*to.*Sender
/var/mail/admin

and I get following error message:

procmail: Error while writing to "/var/mail/admin"


ls -la /var/mail/
total 76
drwxrwsr-x 2 root mail 4096 Mar 29 16:15 .
drwxr-xr-x 13 root root 4096 Feb 26 2020 ..


Cheers mike

If you are not running that as root nor mail, you can't write to /var/mail as you have
vs

Ah, thanks,
so you mean that procmailrc needs root permissions?
cheers mike

AFAIK, procmail can’t create directories…the targets of procmail recipes must already exist.

thanks scasey,

/var/mail/admin is an existing file.

i stuck with the permissions, not very familiar for me.
anyway procmailrc file has root:root permission.

so i think it's problem with the permission of /var/mail/admin file, which i have posted above in my earlier reply.

cheers mike

Jayjwa,

could you give me perhaps the command for setting drwxrwxrwt to /var/mail/admin (file)?

Thanks for your info.
Cheers mike

I think it needs to create a temp file in /var/mail so /var/mail must be writable.

thanks MadeInGermany,

get now:

ls -la /var/mail/
total 120
drwxrwsrwt 2 root mail 4096 Mar 30 12:31 .
drwxrwxr-x 13 root root 4096 Feb 26 2020 ..

btw get also:
stat -c '%A %a %n %U %G' /var/mail/
drwxrwsrwt 3777 /var/mail/ root mail

why do I get 3777 instead of 1777 ?

cheers mike

still get this result for procmailrc entry:

:0
* ^Subject:.*Undelivered Mail.*Returned.*to.*Sender
/var/mail/admin

procmail: Match on "^Subject:.*Undelivered Mail.*Returned.*to.*Sender"
procmail: Assigning "LASTFOLDER=/var/mail/admin"
procmail: Opening "/var/mail/admin"
procmail: Error while writing to "/var/mail/admin"

cheers mike

It seems to me that a possible solution to the OP's question would be if the OP were able to create a standard user and configure said user with a mailbox as a debugging step.

The g+s adds one bit, obviously the significant 2.
(Like the significant 1 that is the t bit. Both bits make 2+1 == 3).

Ensure the file is present with correct owner and permission: as the user (mailbox owner) do
Eventually rm an incorrect /var/mail/admin file first, or rmdir a /var/mail/admin directory.

thanks MadeInGermany,

permission 660 does not work.
but if i use 662 it works.

Am I missing something?

cheers mike

OK,

found the solution:

Just add user 'root' to /var/mail/admin (root is the user of procmailrc)
permission 660 is now OK for /var/mail/admin.
adding the t bit to /var/mail/ is not needed.

everything works now as wanted.

just one more question:

ls -la /var/mail/
total 76
drwxrwsr-x 2 root mail 4096 Mar 29 16:15 .
drwxr-xr-x 13 root root 4096 Feb 26 2020 ..

First entry is the permission of the folder itself.
But what is the second permission?

Thanks for a tip.

Cheers mike