From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/60783 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Rodolfo Medina Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Re: How to make gnus store received mail in the directory /mnt/windows? [solved] Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2005 14:46:16 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1124203950 9035 80.91.229.2 (16 Aug 2005 14:52:30 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2005 14:52:30 +0000 (UTC) Original-X-From: ding-owner+M9315=ding+2Daccount=gmane.org@lists.math.uh.edu Tue Aug 16 16:52:20 2005 Return-path: Original-Received: from malifon.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.13]) by ciao.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1E52lW-00026Q-Pv for ding-account@gmane.org; Tue, 16 Aug 2005 16:50:10 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.math.uh.edu ident=lists) by malifon.math.uh.edu with smtp (Exim 3.20 #1) id 1E52lV-0004Ew-03 for ding-account@gmane.org; Tue, 16 Aug 2005 09:50:09 -0500 Original-Received: from util2.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.23]) by malifon.math.uh.edu with esmtp (Exim 3.20 #1) id 1E52lP-0004Eo-00 for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Tue, 16 Aug 2005 09:50:03 -0500 Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.224.244]) by util2.math.uh.edu with esmtp (Exim 4.30) id 1E52lM-0007am-TN for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Tue, 16 Aug 2005 09:50:01 -0500 Original-Received: from main.gmane.org ([80.91.229.2] helo=ciao.gmane.org) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1E51pH-0001tO-00 for ; Tue, 16 Aug 2005 15:49:59 +0200 Original-Received: from list by ciao.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.43) id 1E52jH-0001Pf-6o for ding@gnus.org; Tue, 16 Aug 2005 16:47:51 +0200 Original-Received: from ppp-191-52.26-151.libero.it ([151.26.52.191]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Tue, 16 Aug 2005 16:47:51 +0200 Original-Received: from romeomedina by ppp-191-52.26-151.libero.it with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Tue, 16 Aug 2005 16:47:51 +0200 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Original-To: ding@gnus.org Original-Lines: 87 Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org User-Agent: Loom/3.14 (http://gmane.org/) X-Loom-IP: 151.26.52.191 (Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040804) X-Spam-Score: -4.7 (----) Precedence: bulk Original-Sender: ding-owner@lists.math.uh.edu Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:60783 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general:60783 Many thanks to all who contributed to solve this interesting problem with their replies. I'm giving a report that might be useful to others in future. Rodolfo ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To make gnus store received mail in desired directory, let's call it /path/to/mydir, I put in my .gnus.el the following: (setq gnus-select-method '(nnml "received-mail" (nnml-directory "/path/to/mydir") )) , and it worked fine unless the desired directory was: /mnt/windows or one of its subdirs. In that case, when gnus tried to fetch new mail it failed, and in the echo area such a message appeared: Doing chmod: operation not permitted, /mnt/windows/mail-prova/mail/misc/60 . This happened because, when creating the new files where to put received mail, gnus tries to do `chmod' in order to change the permissions of those files: all read and write permissions are denied to other users different from yourself: gnus is doing chmod as a security precaution, to ensure that your messages are not readable by anyone other than yourself. But, the /mnt/windows partition is a vfat one, as it was shown giving the mount command: [rodolfo@localhost rodolfo]$ mount /dev/hda8 on / type ext3 (rw) none on /proc type proc (rw) none on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw) none on /sys type sysfs (rw) none on /mnt/floppy type supermount (rw,sync,dev=/dev/fd0,fs=ext2:vfat,--,umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-15, codepage=850) /dev/hda1 on /mnt/windows type vfat (rw,umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-15,codepage=850) , and vfat partitions lack of support for unix-style permissions. So, the gnus' request of doing 'chmod' could not be satisfied for /mnt/windows. That is the meaning of the error message. To solve the problem, all I had to do was to set `rodolfo' in /etc/fstab as /mnt/windows's owner. That way, all files and folders in /mnt/windows will be "simulated" owned by user rodolfo, group rodolfo (since there are no users/groups in reality, on a FAT file system). But actually, only the simulated owner is allowed to issue the chmod call on a mounted FAT file system. So, now gnus could do `chmod' through the user rodolfo and the problem was solved. To do so, I did: [rodolfo@localhost rodolfo]$ id uid=501(rodolfo) gid=501(rodolfo) groups=501(rodolfo) , and then in /etc/fstab I changed the line /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows vfat umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-15,codepage=850 0 0 into /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows vfat umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-15,codepage=850,uid=501,gid=501 0 0 , where (see fstab man): /dev/hda1 is the first field; /mnt/windows is the second field; vfat is the third field; umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-15,codepage=850,uid=501,gid=501 is the fourth field; 0 is the fifth field; 0 is the sixth field. . The only problem left is that other users different from `rodolfo' will not be able to store their mail into /mnt/windows.