Re: Changing standard mailbox setup of Debian?
Richard Kettlewell schrieb:
> Arthur Korn writes:
> > So what's the problem with using MAIL=~/.mail?
>
> You may have to deliver over NFS with that. A lot of people don't
> want NFS involved in their mail delivery, usually for performance or
> reliability reasons.
Nobody stops them to change MAIL to something else. Our current
default is a security problem though (or a locking problem with
the current version of mail).
> Also some sites like to keep home directories and the mail spool
> separated e.g. for quota or backup purposes.
These are probably in the minority (I know of some universities
that have the mailboxes in the homedirs -- having all user data
in one place is often considered more convenient).
> You can use ~/.mail yourself if you like - but it's not necessarily
> the best choice for a default.
My proposal for future mailbox policy would go along the lines
of:
MAIL is set to ~/.mail if /var/spool/mail/$USER doesn't exist,
else /var/spool/mail/$USER. Programs have to use MAIL, no
hardcoded mailbox paths.
MDAs are per default configured to deliver to ~/.mail, though
on install they check the contents of /var/spool/mail/ and ask
there to put mail if there are mailboxes (we should probably not
automate this decision further, it could become very confusing).
ciao, 2ri
--
Q: How does a Unix guru have sex?
A: gunzip;strip;touch;finger;mount;fsck;more;yes;fsck;fsck;fsck;umount;sleep
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