[SGVLUG] Qmail oddity (?) [at least, hard to find the answer online...]

[John E. Kreznar]

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In a posting purporting to be from "Emerson, Tom (*IC)"
<Tom.Emerson at wbconsultant.com> but lacking a digital signature, it is
written:

> I got an odd question thrown at me today - seems messages were
> simply "not being delivered" to some users we recently set up for
> the SCGS library (using qmail) Nothing special about these "users",
> in fact, they were basically set up via the "adduser" command with
> no further embellishment.  I checked the /var/log/qmail/current
> logfile and found this message:

>     Uh-oh:_home_directory_is_writable.

That error message occurs in qmail-local.c.

According to dot-qmail(5)

SAFE QMAIL EDITING

       Incoming messages can arrive at any moment.  If you want to
       safely edit your .qmail file, first set the sticky bit on your
       home directory:

            chmod +t $HOME

       qmail-local will temporarily defer delivery of any message to
       you if your home directory is sticky (or group-writable or
       other-writable, which should never happen).  Make sure to

            chmod -t $HOME

       when you are done!  It's a good idea to test your new .qmail
       file as follows:

            qmail-local -n $USER ~ $USER '' '' '' '' ./Mailbox

The author D.J.Bernstein of qmail justifies this in some document, but
I'd have to dig a bit in order to find it (I no longer use qmail).
Have you looked in /usr/share/doc/qmail*?

Hope this helps.

- -- 
 John E. Kreznar jek at ininx.com 9F1148454619A5F08550 705961A47CC541AFEF13

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