Re: /var/mail back to /var/spool/mail

["Mark D. Roth" <roth@uiuc.edu>]

In our last exciting episode, Daniel Quinlan expounded thusly:
> I'm at LinuxExpo, getting the chance to discuss FHS with some of the
> distributions that are looking hard at FHS.  The number one complaint
> so far (especially from RedHat) is about /var/spool/mail moving to
> /var/mail.  I think I was too willing to move it in the first place.
> 
> Anyway, given the current circumstances and who is and isn't going to
> be following FHS, changing it back to /var/spool/mail seems reasonable
> and possible.
> 
> Would anyone object to changing it back?  If we did, I'd like to put
> it into FHS 2.1 to disseminate the fix ASAP.  I realize it will be an
> inconvenience at best to distributions already working on FHS.  (At
> least nobody has released an FHS-compliant distribution so far.)

Well, for starters, I'd like to say that I like /var/mail better than
/var/spool/mail.  User mailboxes aren't really a "spool" item, like a
print spool or the mail queue.  They're also accessed a LOT more often
these days than they were when /var/spool/mail was historicly created,
which in my mind tends to put them in a category by themselves.

That's two good reasons for /var/mail.  I can't really think of any
good reasons for /var/spool/mail.  Is the objection to /var/mail based
on "this is a pain in the neck" or based on some real technical
reasoning?  It seems to me that if it's the former, give them a
symlink for backwards compatibility and tell them to cope.  The issue
of "this is a pain in the neck" works both ways; a group of us here at
UIUC have been working on an FHS-compliant distribution (I suspect
that there may be other distributions as well), and we've already put
quite a bit of work into putting the mailboxes in /var/mail.

That having been said, if there ARE good reasons for moving it back to
/var/spool/mail, I'm not completely opposed to the change.  I just
dont want to see us take what I would consider a backwards step
because it's difficult to do.

Anyway, just my $.02.

-- 
Mark D. Roth (roth@uiuc.edu)
System Administrator, CCSO Workstation Services Group
http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/roth


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