Debian Bug report logs - #980042
mailutils: movemail doesn't remove extracted emails

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Message #5 received at submit@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Florent Rougon <f.rougon@free.fr>

To: Debian Bug Tracking System <submit@bugs.debian.org>

Subject: mailutils: does not remove extracted emails

Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2021 11:59:11 +0100

Package: mailutils
Version: 1:3.11.1-4
Severity: important

Dear maintainer,

Since I upgraded mailutils from 1:3.10-3+b1 to 1:3.11.1-2 a couple of
days ago, movemail doesn't remove extracted emails anymore from the
source mbox file (I do *not* use option --keep-messages).

Example:

  1) Verify that /var/mail/$USER is empty.

  2) echo Bla | mail -s "Test movemail" $USER

  3) 'ls -l /var/mail/$USER' now reports size 573 bytes (it contains the
     test email sent in step 2).

  4) /usr/bin/movemail.mailutils /var/mail/$USER /tmp/extracted-mail

  5) No error reported, test email was properly extracted to
     /tmp/extracted-mail, but /var/mail/$USER is still 573 bytes long.

This has the following consequence when I use my mail client (Gnus,
which can use movemail to read mbox files): since the upgrade to
mailutils 1:3.11.1-2, *every time I check my mail box*, new copies of
every email stored in /var/mail/$USER are retrieved. A nightmare...

I verified yesterday that the following downgrade of mailutils fixes the
problem:

  [REMOVE, NOT USED] libmailutils8:amd64 1:3.11.1-2
  [INSTALL, DEPENDENCIES] libmailutils7:amd64 1:3.10-3+b1
  [DOWNGRADE] mailutils:amd64 1:3.11.1-2 -> 1:3.10-3+b1
  [DOWNGRADE] mailutils-common:amd64 1:3.11.1-2 -> 1:3.10-3

Today, I upgraded to the latest version in unstable (1:3.11.1-4).
Unfortunately, this caused the problem to reappear, hence this report.

Thanks for your work, kind regards.

Florent

-- System Information:
Debian Release: bullseye/sid
  APT prefers unstable-debug
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable-debug'), (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 5.10.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU threads)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages mailutils depends on:
ii  libc6             2.31-9
ii  libcrypt1         1:4.4.17-1
ii  libfribidi0       1.0.8-2
ii  libgnutls30       3.7.0-5
ii  libgsasl7         1.10.0-3
ii  libldap-2.4-2     2.4.56+dfsg-1
ii  libmailutils8     1:3.11.1-4
ii  libncurses6       6.2+20201114-2
ii  libpam0g          1.4.0-2
ii  libreadline8      8.1-1
ii  libtinfo6         6.2+20201114-2
ii  libunistring2     0.9.10-4
ii  mailutils-common  1:3.11.1-4

Versions of packages mailutils recommends:
ii  postfix [mail-transport-agent]  3.5.6-1

Versions of packages mailutils suggests:
pn  mailutils-doc  <none>
pn  mailutils-mh   <none>

-- no debconf information

Message #16 received at 980042@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Pierrick CHANTEUX <chanteux@ipgp.fr>

To: 980042@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: mailutils: does not remove extracted emails

Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2021 01:24:07 +0100

Hello,

I've been hit by the same bug while trying to delete some messages in my
local mbox with the regular "mail" command. I'm also running mailutils
3.11.1-4 on a sid machine.

While investigating I found out that version 3.11 of mailutils
introduced a rewrite of their traditional mbox handling code. According
to the source code of that "mboxrd" component (libproto/mbox/mboxrd.c),
it appears that when flushing mbox changes to disk, the program will
create and write to a temporary mailbox. If it succeeds, it will then
rename it to your current mbox name. This behavior seems incompatible
with the permissions of /var/mail on a Debian system (2775 root:mail).

When running strace on "mail", I've found this just after issuing the
'quit' command, which seems to confirm the problem :
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/var/mail/username", O_RDWR) = 6
fcntl(6, F_SETLK, {l_type=F_WRLCK, l_whence=SEEK_SET, l_start=0,
l_len=0}) = 0
rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, [HUP INT TERM TSTP WINCH], NULL, 8) = 0
msync(0x7f469e481000, 16357, MS_SYNC)   = 0
fstat(4, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0660, st_size=16357, ...}) = 0
stat("/var/mail", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|S_ISGID|0775, st_size=4096, ...}) = 0
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/var/mail/muMAULJT", O_RDWR|O_CREAT|O_EXCL, 0600) = -1
EACCES (Permission non accordée)

NOTE : "Permission non accordée" translates to "Permission denied"

It's also worth noting that running 'mail -u username' as root works and
I can delete my messages, but it modifies /var/mail/username permissions
(0600 root:mail instead of 0660 username:mail), as expected with that
temporary mbox + renaming way of doing.

Best regards,
-- 
Pierrick CHANTEUX
Service Informatique
Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris
1, rue Jussieu - 75005 Paris

Message #21 received at 980042@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Lieven Marchand <lieven.marchand@gmail.com>

To: 980042@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Upstream has fixed the problem

Date: Mon, 15 Feb 2021 11:46:47 +0100

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/mailutils.git/commit/?id=07ee21c2db558106c8537600698db75e51ac1090

[Message part 2 (text/html, inline)]

Message #26 received at 980042-close@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Debian FTP Masters <ftpmaster@ftp-master.debian.org>

To: 980042-close@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Bug#980042: fixed in mailutils 1:3.11.1-5

Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2021 14:53:43 +0000

Source: mailutils
Source-Version: 1:3.11.1-5
Done: Jordi Mallach <jordi@debian.org>

We believe that the bug you reported is fixed in the latest version of
mailutils, which is due to be installed in the Debian FTP archive.

A summary of the changes between this version and the previous one is
attached.

Thank you for reporting the bug, which will now be closed.  If you
have further comments please address them to 980042@bugs.debian.org,
and the maintainer will reopen the bug report if appropriate.

Debian distribution maintenance software
pp.
Jordi Mallach <jordi@debian.org> (supplier of updated mailutils package)

(This message was generated automatically at their request; if you
believe that there is a problem with it please contact the archive
administrators by mailing ftpmaster@ftp-master.debian.org)


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

Format: 1.8
Date: Tue, 09 Feb 2021 16:17:12 +0100
Source: mailutils
Architecture: source
Version: 1:3.11.1-5
Distribution: unstable
Urgency: medium
Maintainer: Jordi Mallach <jordi@debian.org>
Changed-By: Jordi Mallach <jordi@debian.org>
Closes: 980042
Changes:
 mailutils (1:3.11.1-5) unstable; urgency=medium
 .
   * Enable PostgreSQL support now that OpenSSL is considered a system
     library by Debian ftpmaster.
   * Add upstream patch to fix expunging of mboxes on read-only directories
     (like Debian's /var/mail). Thanks to Pierrick Chanteux for the analysis
     (closes: #980042).
   * Add patch to fix PostgreSQL include dir.
Checksums-Sha1:
 9731890dedbc03cbd4b8e553a162ffce2b9e4afe 3228 mailutils_3.11.1-5.dsc
 2c9762927deeec4c254fb45c1d513e5a64e75b16 37904 mailutils_3.11.1-5.debian.tar.xz
 144301362cb4ebd6ac42b672af91a878ccdc3f2f 15545 mailutils_3.11.1-5_amd64.buildinfo
Checksums-Sha256:
 1bb8495f38d61e4965560d9eb5a9b86e992c113b8728f0e584e352329ecd4543 3228 mailutils_3.11.1-5.dsc
 b15c61e5cb4740d3df396e595fb4de5ade2688c048c452fdcc837da8acc5e841 37904 mailutils_3.11.1-5.debian.tar.xz
 cdf57c13d01da4c4782600ce8cd571183bbc9273896901708e371d404773c9d4 15545 mailutils_3.11.1-5_amd64.buildinfo
Files:
 8156c83801597afc6663311ec784b1d6 3228 mail optional mailutils_3.11.1-5.dsc
 57726c215ee8eb051fa6b16d3dd52a06 37904 mail optional mailutils_3.11.1-5.debian.tar.xz
 91ead578054c863f7d6f94825bdbb97d 15545 mail optional mailutils_3.11.1-5_amd64.buildinfo

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