Re: mailing to files

[Gordon Cook <gcook@credit.erin.utoronto.ca>]

On Wed, 13 Apr 1994, Michael Roberts wrote:

> Greetings,
> 
> I have an alias that spools messages to file.  Something has changed on my
> system in the last day that results in the error message:
> 
> <local - /home/admin/ists/mail/enquiries 29999>: mail to file disallowed
> 
> I don't want to spend too much time tracing down the problem and also don't
> want to drop any mail.
> 
> Can someone offer some pointers as to how I might fix this.

The security criteria for being able to mail to a file are somewhat complex. 
I ran into this problem myself and I discovered that for mail coming from the
outside, both the file and the directory it is in must be owned by the userid
that scheduler (I think) runs as (probably root).  There are other criteria
but this was what caused my problem with mailing to files. 

If this is not the problem, let me know and I will see if I can track 
down the chunk of source which determines the semantics for mailing to 
files.



Gordon J. Cook <gcook@credit.erin.utoronto.ca>
Erindale College, University of Toronto, Canada.

"Beware of programmers who carry screwdrivers."  -- Leonard Brandwein