Jan Minar wrote:
Seems like your messing with switching from root to tom, back and forth. Maybe another users too. Also seems you omit to note what actualy happens (null strace). Fetchmail works as it should, check the /home/tom permissions. Check the ownership and permissions of /home/tom, and the files below. If nothing worked, post a typescript of the actions (script(1)). Peruse id(1), ls -ld, and friends, so we know what exactly is going on.
Many thanks for your patience and help. I have learned to use strace, id and the d option for ls. The ls -ld command revealed that the home directory tom was owned by root. When I corrected this fetchmail worked like a charm.
I know how this came about. I installed a new hard drive after encountering erratic bootup problems and the long smartctl test found a problem. I first attempted to copy the tom directory from the old drive to the new drive using cp and almost certainly as root as I had had to be root to edit fstab in order to mount the old drive which was now a usb drive. I will be more cautious about switching to root in the future. Also it was pointed out to me that tar was a better choice that cp for transferring the directory.
The one frustration is that this has not solved the erratic bootup problem. It has been suggested that this is a hardware problem because the booup fails at different points on different tries and the problem appeared after I replaced the motherboard and cpu. I now tend to suspect the new motherboard because the system runs with no problem once the operating system is loaded and it will always boot from a bbc-2.1 cd with no problem.
Last but not least, not that my .signature growed again ;-/
I didn't understand this last line. Tom