Re: lynx-dev Lynx 2.8.3 with nmh problems

[Klaus Weide]

On Sun, 7 May 2000, Michael Abraham Shulman wrote:

> I think this is it.  /etc/nmh/mhn.defaults tells me that nmh is using
> metamail, and /etc/mailcap is invoking Lynx like this:
> 
> text/html; /usr/bin/lynx -force_html '%s'; needsterminal; description=HTML 
> Text; nametemplate=%s.html
> 
> Which seems like it ought to work, except maybe for the `nametemplate'
> as I'm not sure what that does.  

Seems to be a Debian-specific addition; but anyway, unrecognized fields
should be just ignored by any program that uses mailcap files.

> So I edited /etc/mailcap and added
> `-trace' to the lynx options above.  Now when I reproduce the error, I
> get a Lynx.trace file whose relevant lines appear to be these:
> 
> LYOpenTemp(,.html,w)
> -> '/tmp//cjAgik/L12212-9513TMP.html'
> ... LYOpenTemp(/tmp//cjAgik/L12212-9513TMP.html) failed: Permission denied
> Lynx: Can't open temporary file!
> LYCleanupTemp removing /tmp//cjAgik
> 
> This sure looks like it's a different temporary file.  When I run
> `lynx -trace a-normal-file.html', Lynx.trace instead contains
> corresponding (I think) lines like these:
> 
> LYOpenTemp(,.html,w)
> -> '/tmp//vgFD4E/L12368-8125TMP.html'
> ... LYOpenTemp(/tmp//vgFD4E/L12368-8125TMP.html)
> LYCloseTemp(/tmp//vgFD4E/L12368-8125TMP.html)
> ...LYCloseTemp(/tmp//vgFD4E/L12368-8125TMP.html), closed

Lynx generates some temp files early on during processing of some mailcap
entries.  (Whether that is really needed is another question...)
It depends on your mailcap files whether this happens (I think any
test=condition fields where condition contains a '%' trigger it), but
if not, I assume lynx would just fail later when in needs to create
a temp file for some other purpose.

In 2.8.3, lynx creates a subdirectory for its temp files; that's not a
change I like, but I haven't had problems with it so far.

The subdirectory should be created within the directory given by a TMPDIR
(or LYNX_TEMP_SPACE) environment, or a built-in default ("/tmp/").
The double-// in /tmp//vgFD4E looks suspicious, I don't know whether
it is causing problems.  Try to set TMPDIR to "/tmp" or something else
*not* ending with a '/', see whether that changes anything.

> I must say I'm clueless about what's causing it to fail in the first
> case but succeed in the second.  Any ideas?

Either mhnshow or metamail might change something in the permissions or
umask or environment under which the process is started...

Could you check whether the temp subdirectory is created at all?
And if yes, with which permissions?  (running under strace probably
will show that, see below)

You may want to start lynx with a minimal config file.  Something like

   # nulllynx.cfg:
   PERSONAL_MAILCAP:/dev/null
   GLOBAL_MAILCAP:/dev/null
   PERSONAL_EXTENSION_MAP:/dev/null
   GLOBAL_EXTENSION_MAP:/dev/null
   SUFFIX_ORDER:NO_BUILTIN
   SUFFIX:.html:text/html

 lynx -cfg=/path/to/nulllynx.cfg ...

You may want to run lynx under strace, and again try to figure out
where the relevant differences are; something like

  strace -o lynx.strace /usr/bin/lynx ....


  Klaus




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