tlug: Pine is suddenly flocked

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

I recently upgraded my Debian system, and suddenly Pine stopped being
able to delete messages from folders (or add them to others).  Pine
claims they're "read-only".  This isn't true at the mode level; I'm
guessing it's a file-locking problem.  Root has no such problem, only
ordinary users.

man_db also has stopped working (for ordinary users).  It complains
about not having permission to create a tempfile (a lockfile?) when
updating the data base.  Debian 2.0 (frozen = slink), kernel 2.0.30
and 2.2.1-ac5 show the same problem, glibc-2.0.7-19981211.

Does this sound familiar to anyone?  I don't _think_ I changed
permissions on any files.  procmail for example is still working.

Is it possible that these programs use a non-standard file locking
protocol?  Does anybody know how these programs perform file locking
(and if they use lockfiles, where they put them?

(BTW, Chris, I am having a bloody awful time trying to compile a Sparc 
-> Sparc compiler on an I586.  Go ahead, giggle.)

-- 
University of Tsukuba                Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences       Tel/fax: +81 (298) 53-5091
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
What are those two straight lines for?  "Free software rules."
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Next Nomikai: March 19 (Fri), 19:30  Tengu TokyoEkiMae 03-3275-3691
Next Technical Meeting: April 10 (Sat), 12:30   place: Temple Univ.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
more info: http://tlug.linux.or.jp                     Sponsor: PHT