Re: Mutt can not delete mails
On Thu 11 Nov 2021 at 15:53:53 (-0500), Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 11, 2021 at 02:48:25PM -0600, David Wright wrote:
> > There should be some indication at this point of why it can't
> > delete your emails. The reason you see the filename
> > /home/username/.mutt-cache/scratchpad/mutt-hostname… above is
> > that I have set tmpdir="$HOME/.mutt-cache/scratchpad" in my
> > muttrc file. I use that, rather than /tmp, because it is encrypted
> > along with all of /home. But it means I have to clean it occasionally.
>
> If mutt normally writes these "temporary files" in /tmp (whaaat, how do
> you guarantee an atomic move from /tmp to /var/mail??) then the OP
> should at least check the perms and ownership of /tmp.
>
> ls -ld /tmp
>
> We've seen *so* many people with messed-up /tmp ownership lately.
I assume it does check '$tmpdir'/$TMPDIR, but only when it requires
its use, hence the message. After that, what can it do but give up
syncing? I suppose it could treat deleting /all/ messages as a
special case and truncate the file.
One is warned about security risks with confidentiality from poor
choice of tmpdir. I don't think it ever does a conventional atomic
move (nor do I know the mechanism that one would use without having
write access to the directory). I think it writes it back.
Personally, it doesn't worry me what it does, because all the mail
in my /var/mail/ is ephemeral stuff from APT, cron etc from this
and my other hosts. All my /real/ mail is either on a remote IMAP
server (different mechanism, presumably) or in local mailboxes also
on /home. Therefore the most frequent use for my tmpdir is juggling
files while composing replies.
Cheers,
David.
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