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List:       exim-users
Subject:    Re: .forward on /dev/null homedir freeze
From:       Philip Hazel <ph10 () cus ! cam ! ac ! uk>
Date:       1997-10-28 11:45:30
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On Tue, 28 Oct 1997, Daniel Ryde wrote:

> Oum, I "chmod 0" on the .forward file, and all messages went frozen
> instead... Is this good? It is quite common that users chmod their
> forwardfile to stop the forwarding. 

I doubt that it is common among "ordinary" users. Most of ours don't
understand much about the permission system at all, let alone a
"sophisticated" command such as "chmod 0". This strikes me as very much
hacker behaviour.

However, if it is something that people actually do, then I suppose Exim 
should follow the crowd. Sigh. I can just see the future, though, with a 
newbie sysadmin setting up a small mailing list using forwardfile, and 
getting the permission wrong so that Exim cannot read it...

It occurs to me that all this special stuff you are asking for is 
applicable to users' personal forward files, and not when forwardfile is 
being used for mailing lists. Maybe there should be an option that says 
"this is a user's personal forwardfile" which would be less strict on 
some things.

Handling personal .forward files in users' home directories has always 
been a cause of much effort. It doesn't seem to be getting any less... :-)

-- 
Philip Hazel                   University Computing Service,
ph10@cus.cam.ac.uk             New Museums Site, Cambridge CB2 3QG,
P.Hazel@ucs.cam.ac.uk          England.  Phone: +44 1223 334714


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