[Alpine-info] Problems with Alpine/Parallels/MacOS, please help

[Andrew C Aitchison]

On Wed, 28 Jun 2023, UMR IBIMA Sekretariat wrote:


> I hope to obtain advice, using Alpine in a Parallels virtual machine,

> running MacOS inside MacOS.

> 

> All software versions are the most recent ones; fresh installations as of

> June 2023.

> 

>  

> 

>    - MacOS runs in a virtual machine (VM) using Parallels desktop on

> MacOS (MacOS is also the host system)

> 

>    - Alpine is running in the VM

> 

>    - Configuration/sent mails/received mails of Alpine should be stored

> in the host system. For this a shared network folder was created in the

> host system and connected to the VM.

> 

>    - Files and folders like ".pinerc" and "mail" should be a symlink to

> the shared network folder.

> 

>  

> Example:

> 

>    - Mounted network folder is "/Volumes/HostShared"

> 

>    - "/home/username/.pinerc" is symlink to

> "/Volumes/HostShared/Alpine/.pinerc"

> 

>    - "/home/username/mail" is symlink to

> "/Volumes/HostShared/Alpine/mail"

> 

>    - other files/folders belonging to Alpine are symlinked as just

> mentioned.


I see no mention of username in the symlink target.
Should I assume that the client machine only has one user ?
(I assume you aren't confusing the system directory of mailboxes with
the user's directory of mail folders).

Does alpine run with an particular group id, or setgid or similar ?
IIRC MacOS/HFS+ has a wider user/group/permission system than
"standard" unix.
ACLs or Mandatory access control (MAC) could also be relevant.

Is *mounting* the mail folder at /home/username/mail (rather
than using a symlink) an option ?
There could be other problems with this - on Linux it would break snaps
- but it might make a difference.


> Problems discovered during testing:

> 

>    - Alpine takes a long time trying to save sent messages and then

> fails.


Could that be a locking issue ?


>    - Alpine refuses to write to .pinerc as it is not located in the home

> directory.


Not sure about thus, but if alpine updates by making a new file and mv'ing
it over the old one, it would be tricky to fix.



>    - Yet if files are manually copied to the network folder (by using the

> symlinks) everything goes fast and as expected.


That suggests to me that some part of user/group/permission is correct,
but that some part of permissions/ACL/MAC could be different for alpine.


> Q.: What could be done to make Alpine work?

> 

> Thanks a lot in advance!

> > 

> A. Brauer


-- 
Andrew C. Aitchison                      Kendal, UK
                    andrew at aitchison.me.uk