Re: Why are mailboxes in /var/mail owned by group mail?

To: debian-devel@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: Why are mailboxes in /var/mail owned by group mail?
From: Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>
Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2012 13:21:27 -0800
Message-id: <[🔎] 87ip7x68mg.fsf@windlord.stanford.edu>
In-reply-to: <[🔎] alpine.DEB.2.02.1212191143260.25785@kubuntu> (Jaldhar H. Vyas's message of "Wed, 19 Dec 2012 12:17:19 -0500 (EST)")
References: <[🔎] alpine.DEB.2.02.1212191143260.25785@kubuntu>

"Jaldhar H. Vyas" <jaldhar@debian.org> writes:

> What is the reason for mailboxes to be owned by group mail when in
> Debian we have per-user groups and AFAIK no daemons or other system
> processes belong to the mail group?

So that you can, if you choose, run mail delivery agents and POP/IMAP
servers as something other than root.

http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/footnotes.html#f102

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

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- Why are mailboxes in /var/mail owned by group mail?
  - From: "Jaldhar H. Vyas" <jaldhar@debian.org>

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