Re: [Nmh-workers] [exmh-workers] Second release candidate for nmh1.5 is now available

[David Levine]

Kevin wrote:

> I'm building and packaging this.  This part of the 'make install'
>
>   chgrp mail /buildroot/nmh-1.5-1kc_0tek_RC2_fc16.x86_64/usr/bin/inc && \
>   chmod 2755 /buildroot/nmh-1.5-1kc_0tek_RC2_fc16.x86_64/usr/bin/inc; \
>
> requires the builder to belong to the "mail", which won't be the case
> when I try to install this on my computer at work.

It looks like this is on Linux.  If you add --with-locking=fcntl
to your configure, then the install won't try to chgrp/chmod.
On Linux, fcntl locking should be used anyway.  The Fedora RPM
build does.

> In my own packaging I'm using this in the %files section of the RPM
> spec file:
>
>   %{attr(2755,root,mail,-) %{_bindir}/inc
>
> That eases the situation some, as I actually specify the user and
> group as variables in my ~/.rpmrc, allowing different machines
> to define it as needed.  That takes care of my installations at
> work.
>
> But, once I get around the installation issue, why does 'inc'
> need special group ownership and SGID treatment?

To create a lock file in the mail spool directory.  Linux
/bin/mail (mailx) uses fcntl, not lock files, hence the
recommendation to use --with-locking=fcntl and avoid all this.

> Would that reason be related to the 'inc' in Fedora's build of nmh-1.4
> asking me for a password when I want to 'inc' my email?

I thought that was due to setting MAILHOST?

> FWIW, Fedora has undone the special treatment of the 'inc' file.

Right, using fcntl locking.

> For the time being I'm trying to maintain the nmh Makefile
> treatment of 'inc' to see how RC2 does.

Have you looked at docs/contrib/nmh.spec?  It's intended to be
generic.

I just noticed that it has --enable-pop, which is obsolete.  I'll
remove that.

David