QPopper - Failed to create /var/spool/pop/.username.pop

I'm assuming the user has uid 1000, but why is the gid 0? Shouldn't that be the gid for mail? My guess is that the qpop server should be setgid mail or the configuration in xinetd should specificy that it runs with gid mail.

(I don't use Debian and don't use qpopper but that's where I would look).

Hi, Stephen, and thanks for responding - it's the first help I've gotten on this problem.

Your response got me aimed in the right direction, anyway. I looked at the working system, and indeed, it is creating the file with uid:gid username:mail.

I've already tried setting group = mail in the /etc/xinetd.d/qpopper, but tried it again - no luck.

I went back and checked some more - and FINALLY - the /var/mail directory was set to root:root in the failing system. I changed it to root:mail as in the working system, and everything works now.

Evidently qpopper was picking up the gid from the /spool/mail directory and using it.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!

Jerry

To clarify, having permission setgid on the mail directory (g=rws) means that all files in the directory will be created with the same group, assuming the process has correct permissions. So qpopper doesn't have to do anything special.

@SteveG:

To clarify, having permission setgid on the mail directory (g=rws) means that all files in the directory will be created with the same group, assuming the process has correct permissions. So qpopper doesn't have to do anything special. qpopper still needs to have the ability to write in the directory which, in this case, means it has the "mail" group in it's current permission list.

QPopper calls setuid() to set the user to the person logging in, and setgid() to set the group to mail.

But it seems that it picks up the gid for mail from the /var/mail directory - which is why I had the wrong group when trying to create the file in /var/spool/pop.