[techtalk] problems with Sendmail

[Andrew Kirkpatrick]

Hi Emma,

What is the error he gets when the user tries and fails to get his mail?
Also what does it say in /var/log/maillog about it?

The problem you describe about using su is natural enough, su alone will
change your username and group but nothing much else. It sounds like
you're running su from a directory which that user is not allowed to be
in, so the shell has a problem starting up.

Try 'su - <username>' which will simulate a login for that user, changing
all your enviroment variables including the current directory.


On Wed, 02 Feb 2000, you wrote:
> I hopw someone can help me: I'm not very experienced in Linux and I'm 
> taking in charge a Sendmail server. Lately I'm having always the same 
> problem with users very often: a certain user cannot receive his mail, and 
> when I try to login with this user, the message (last login.......you have 
> mail, etc) appears for a second and then the prompt before logging comes 
> back, and if I log in as root and make su username, I receive the following 
> message: shel-init: could not get current directory. The only solution I 
> find is renaming his var/spool/mail to keep the messages, remove the user 
> and then create it again, and then it works normally but I would like to 
> find out the problem...
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> 
> Emma
> 

-- 
Andrew Kirkpatrick
http://www.northnet.com.au/~arjuna

************
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