Re: [hypermail] need help -- hypermail error

From: Rev. Bob 'Bob' Crispen <crispen_at_hiwaay.net_at_hypermail-project.org>
Date: Wed, 2 May 2001 16:11:17 -0500
Message-ID: <1312177960.20010502161117_at_hiwaay.net>

Hi, Scott,
You said on Tuesday, May 01, 2001 at 5:27:47 PM:

> Hi all, my Hypermail has stopped working, and I'm not sure why.

> I've been using Hypermail v. 2b29 for many months now with no problems. I
> use procmail to filter the incoming messages and send them to Hypermail if
> appropriate.

> Last night I changed the -d output directory on my UNIX system. Since then
> Hypermail hasn't worked at all. I've made sure permissions were correctly
> set in the new directory so that it could write to it. I even tried
> changing the directory back to the old one and it no longer works.

If you're running majordomo and using a pipe in /etc/aliases to send the mail to hypermail, you need to make sure the owner of the directory is the same as the owner of majordomo (normally majordom).

> When I run Hypermail from the command line on an mbox file called
> mbox.2001, I get the following error:

> hypermail: Couldn't create lock file "mbox.2001/.hypermail.lock".

> What does this mean, and how can I correct it? Is that what's causing the
> error?

Two possibilities: mbox.2001/.hypermail.lock already exists, but with a different owner, or the username running hypermail doesn't have write permissions to the mbox.2001 directory.

There's a third possibility -- you're using the wrong command line arguments. The command line should be something like

    % /path/to/hypermail -m mbox.2001 -d /path/to/hypermail_directory

If you've mixed up your -m and -d, you could get that message because mbox.2001 is a file, not a directory.

-- 
Rev. Bob "Bob" Crispen
crispen at hiwaay dot net

If a cow laughed, would milk come out her nose?

Received on Wed 02 May 2001 11:15:27 PM GMT