Re: New imap saves all mail to $HOME/mbox ????
On Wed, 22 Apr 1998, Alexander Stavitsky wrote:
> On Wed, 22 Apr 1998, Tim Sailer wrote:
>
> > > I use fetchmail and I do not think I upgraded it recently, although I
> > > might be wrong. This happens even if I telnet to port 143 and just check
> > > how many messages I have. Besides, imap server still counts those in mbox
> > > as messages. It looks like it concatenates mbox and /var/spool/mail/$USER
> > > when showing user's INBOX. That's why I think it's impa problem, not
> > > client problem.
> >
> > Nutscrape takes a look at every file/directory in your home dir and
> > treats it
> > as a mailbox.. :(
>
> I do not think I mentioned Netscape anywhere in my email and that's
> because I DO NOT USE it for email. I'm saying that even if I just telnet
> to port 143 and issue SELECT INBOX it shows not only messages in
> /var/spool/mail/$USER but also in $HOME/mbox, appending those in
> /var/spool/mail/$USER to those in $HOME/mbox.
>
This has been the default behavior of many imapd programs for a long time.
It moves the mail from the spool to the inbox upon checking for mail. I
do not think this is considered a problem but is possibly a configuration
item when building that particular imapd implimentation.
In cases like this, the assumption is that the home directory is a remote
mount most likely using some form of automounter. The mail is moved to the
home directory so that it can be accessed from any machine. The mail spool
on the mail server might not be accessable from any other machines.
Since your mailbox lives in your home dir it makes sense to move the mail
to the mailbox as soon as you check your mail. This makes perfect sense
when you have a network of several hundred unix machines in a building
and the spool file is not accessable from your local machine but your
home directory is.
George Bonser
If I had a catchy quip, it would be here.
http://www.debian.org
Debian/GNU Linux ... the maintainable operating system.
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