OK, this USED to work, I must have broken it at some point. I have spamassassin running, and in my ~ dir I have a procmail recipe I got off the web someplace, months ago. Here that is:
:0fw: spamassassin.lock
* < 256000
| /usr/local/bin/spamc

#
# spam folder for email identified as spam - change file/directory name
# if necessary
#

:0:
* ^X-Spam-Status: Yes
/dev/null


Now, this used to write a lockfile in my ~, which disappeared immediately. Worked like a charm. Now, however, I am getting THIS in my procmail logs:
procmail: Suspicious rcfile "/home/ray/.procmailrc"
procmail: Couldn't read "/home/ray/.procmailrc"

The permissions on .procmailrc are 600.
What's happened here?
TIA, Ray

Just for curiosity's sake:

1. Have you changed the permissions on ~ recently?

2. What are those permissions?

Make sure only you, and not others in your group, have write permission on ~.

Hope this helps.

YES! I forgot about it, but i did, in order to share my ~ with M$ box. I set it to 777 which shared it perfectly, but may have caused this trouble. I put it back, it now shows:
drwx------ 65 ray ray 4096 Feb 11 12:12 ray
Let's see if you put your finger right on the problem, and if so, my undying gratitude.

Nope, that didnt fix it, I just got spam, and procmail.log shows:
procmail: Suspicious rcfile "/home/ray/.procmailrc"
procmail: Couldn't read "/home/ray/.procmailrc"

What permissions should be on .procmailrc?
OR, other ideas?

Never mind, call off the dogs. I set perms on .procmailrc to:
-rw-r--r-- 1 ray ray 1974 Feb 11 11:56 .procmailrc
and we are back in business. I know that because, tailing beagles logs results in:
20070211 15:37:25.4795 03105 Beagle DEBUG: *** Remove '/home/ray' 'spamassassin.lock' (file)
20070211 15:37:25.4829 03105 Beagle DEBUG: Could not resolve unique id of 'spamassassin.lock' in '/home/ray' for removal, it is probably already gone

This proves the thing is working. Thanks for your help, I would never have tracked that down without your help.