[ale] mail dir permisions

[Steven A. DuChene]

I am having some weird things go on with permissions on my incoming
mail folder in /var/spool/mail/ Whenever I get out of elm and don't
move all of the mail into received folders in my home directory
(i.e. answer no to the "Move read messages to "received" folder?"
question as I quit elm) as the files get written back to
/var/spool/mail/sad the permissions on the file get changed from 660
to 600 which causes locally delivered mail to bounce. Now I have
checked perms/ownerships on various things which I have shown below:

drwxrwsr-x   2 root     mail         1024 Jan 25 09:50 /var/spool/mail/
-rwxr-sr-x   1 root     mail       263172 Jun 18  1995 /usr/bin/elm*

but so far I haven't been able to spot what is wrong. I do know that
as the mail is getting written back to /var/spool/mail/sad it creates
a /var/spool/mail/sad.lock file with permissions of 400 but I'm guessing
that is normal. Anyone have any ideas?

BTW, if I quit elm in such a way that the file is left empty by saving
or deleting all of my mail the permissions on the file don't get messed
with.
-- 
Steven A. DuChene   Linux Weenie!  http://www.mindspring.com/~sduchene

The church is near but the road is icy; the bar is far away but I will
walk carefully.
                -- Russian Proverb