also sprach Peter Jay Salzman (on Fri, 02 Mar 2001 05:15:35PM -0800): > On Fri 02 Mar 01, 8:06 PM, MaD dUCK said: > > are you running mail as root??? don't do that! > just out of curiosity, why? i've never heard a compelling reason > for that
the simplest reason: because you shouldn't ever be logged in as root for longer than a particular task takes. the more elaborate stuff (and this is only an extract): - vi has a feature which can extract commands out of files to execute them while the file is being loaded. this is useful, if for instance you are a ts=2 person, but that one program's config file isn't usable unless ts=8. so vi reads the file, executes the command, then displays the file. if this command is something well though of which executes something through a shell, and someone sent a mail to root containing this command, then it would be executed possibly even without root noticing it. - there were a couple of problems with sendmail relating to malformed reply-to addresses which included a pipe symbol. basically the core of it was that you'd put a script of the form #!/bin/sh install -o-0 -g=0 /usr/bin/ksh /tmp/blech chmod u+s !!:4 sendmail $* into /tmp/[EMAIL PROTECTED] and then send mail to root with a reply-to address similar to "laure|@yahoo.com". if root were to reply, the script would be executed, creating /tmp/blech as a setuid shell that would immediately give root rights... you should just set up a user account ('p' in your case), put [EMAIL PROTECTED] into ~root/.forward and define a procmail filter to store all your root mail in ~p/mail/root. > > echo $MAIL > /var/spool/mail/p the problem is this: /var/mail/p contains your mail spool, but mutt may possibly be moving read mail somewhere else. if i were you, i'd create a file ~/mail/inbox, define a simple procmail recipe like: :0 $HOME/mail/inbox point your .forward to /usr/bin/procmail, change MAIL to ~/mail/inbox permanently, and add every single one of the mailboxes you have to .muttrc as follows: (e.g. for mailboxes in, work, debian:) mailboxes +in mailboxes +work mailboxes +debian where '+' will expand to the path you specified with the "set folder" clause in .muttrc. keeping all your mail in /var's spool isn't necessarily all too great i find - issues are locking, privacy, backing up, and others. > > and in mutt, after you hit c, type '=' (no quotes) and then hit tab > > once or twice. report what happens. > > this works. didn't know about this keybinding. thanks! :) '=' expands to the mail folder, just like '+' above. and tab completion works all the way throughout mutt. > i'm curious if a bunch of other messages start appearing. do you have > woody? when was the last time you upgraded? nah. potato. i need a working system, not too much in need of the cutting edge. martin [greetings from the heart of the sun]# echo [EMAIL PROTECTED]:1:[EMAIL PROTECTED]@@@.net -- "no small art is it to sleep: it is necessary for that purpose to keep awake all day." -- friedrich nietzsche