Help: sendmail/filter locking errors

[eamon@studentservices.com (Eamon Daly)]

I just made the   switch the debian  distribution,
and I'm fairly  impressed with it so far. However,
with   the  installation   of  the  elm  2.4pl25-2
package, filter appears to be broken. It panics
when it tries to lock, reporting:

filter (Wed Aug 21 09:30:32 1996 eamon): Mailing message to eamon
filter (Wed Aug 21 09:31:02 1996 eamon): Couldn't create lock file
filter (Wed Aug 21 09:31:02 1996 eamon): Can't open mailbox /var/spool/mail/eamon!
filter (Wed Aug 21 09:31:02 1996 eamon): Using /home/eamon/EMERGENCY_MBOX as emergency mailbox

Permissions  on the inboxes in /var/spool/mail are
660, owned by  owner and grouped by 'mail'. Normal
mail (smail) delivery seems  to be  going smoothly
with no locking errors. Any ideas?

   - Eamon Daly
     Manager, Electronic Marketing
     (847) 785 8000 x205