Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 12:59:32 -0600 (CST) From: Joe Greco <jgreco@brasil.moneng.mei.com> To: terry@lambert.org (Terry Lambert) Cc: MRC@CAC.Washington.EDU, gpalmer@FreeBSD.org, jgreco@brasil.moneng.mei.com, terry@lambert.org, j@uriah.heep.sax.de, roberto@keltia.freenix.fr, current@FreeBSD.org, scrappy@ki.net Subject: Re: /var/mail (was: re: Help, permission problems...) Message-ID: <199610311859.MAA28351@brasil.moneng.mei.com> In-Reply-To: <199610311829.LAA25654@phaeton.artisoft.com> from "Terry Lambert" at Oct 31, 96 11:29:55 am
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> > > To be perfectly honest, I don't see the problem here ... make the
> > > locking method an option, just like elm does. No more problem.
> >
> > What about my users who thank me for *NOT* doing this, because they find Elm's
> > options too confusing?
Well, Crispin can add several of us to the list of users who thank him for
being a total jerk BECAUSE he does not do this.
Elm suffers because it doesn't (or at least didn't, since I have not looked
recently) attempt to do any tests to try to figure out reasonable defaults.
> I can't believe elm is still that popular (even though it's *my* personal
> favorite). I have to say this has got to be a reductio ad absurdum
> argument -- a straw man. It's possible to test the failure case during
> config by compiling up a small test program.
Crispin's argument is very mildly valid: if you have a system built to
not do .lock style locking, and then through some magic changes you decide
to NFS mount off a Sun server, you are then at risk. That is true.
Crispin has danced around the issue of "what happens to all the other
local mail agents that also break"... i.e. the admin will have LOTS more
problems to worry about than just IMAP4.
Crispin has totally ignored the possibility of stat("/var/mail") as a
very accurate method of determining the information he needs to know
at run time, effectively addressing his concern.
And Crispin - in typical bull headed style - has argued that he must do
this in order to avoid complaints from users. He appears to have
forgotten that bogus warnings and errors scare new users and generated
the complaint that started this thread.
Well I think we should all complain when we see this cryptic mail box
locking message come up. (It might even not be too hard to automate it
so that Crispin receives an automated complaint every time this error
message pops up. Not that I would ever do THAT!)
... Joe
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Joe Greco - Systems Administrator jgreco@ns.sol.net
Solaria Public Access UNIX - Milwaukee, WI 414/546-7968
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