Re: Changing standard mailbox setup of Debian?

[Sam Hartman <hartmans@mit.edu>]

>>>>> "Arthur" == Arthur Korn <arthur@korn.ch> writes:

    Arthur> Richard Kettlewell schrieb:
    >> Radovan Garabik writes:

    >> Similar remarks might apply to backups - it's common to define
    >> how backups are handled at a granularity of filesystems rather
    >> than directories within filesystems, so keeping mail out of
    >> $HOME provides more scope for choosing different policies.
    >> 
    >> This isn't a discussion about what policy to use on any given
    >> site: it's about what the default should be.  The examples
    >> above suggest that /var/spool/mail (or /var/mail) supports a
    >> wider range of policies; and I think that that makes it a more
    >> suitable choice for a default.

    Arthur> We do only have this problem because of some programs that
    Arthur> ignore MAIL. MAIL allows you to choose whatever path you
    Arthur> want, and thus is a lot more flexible than any hard coded
    Arthur> default.

No, that's simply not true.  MTAs do not have access to the user's
environment.    They need a configuration/delivery default.

Also, you need to support the SGID mess in all your MUAs anyway
because regardless of your default, you want to support
/var/spool/mail.  You could add even more complexity to not make MUAs
setgid on systems where you don't need it, but it's not clear how
useful this is.