Re: /var/mail back to /var/spool/mail
If /var/mail is allowed to be a symlink, it may be possible to ease
the transition with clever post-install scripts.
Policy could be written that says no mail package shall actually
include the /var/mail, but insead make it during install: a symlink if
/var/spool/mail exists, otherwise a real directory (as in first
install of a compliant system).
The actual move can then be done at leisure, instead of when the
packages involved are upgraded. It would be nice if there was common
code, perhaps in a separate package, that could perform this tricky
procedure.
My own setup is a worst-case, an 800MB spool on a separate partition
thats not even /var/mail or even /var/spool/mail, just /mail. :-) It
may be best just to have the packages warn to move it manually....
I'm CCing the Debian Policy list on this.
"David" == David C Niemi <niemi@tux.org> writes:
>> workstation vendors who have the majority of the > market are Sun,
>> HP, and IBM; DEC's Digital Unix is a minority. The latest
>> versions of each of the major vendors' Unices (HP-UX 10.20,
>> Solaris 2.6, and AIX 4.2) all use /var/mail. (As for your
>> assertion > that HP-UX uses /usr/mail, look more closely.
>> /usr/mail is a symlink > to /var/mail.) I think IRIX does as well,
>> but I dont currently have a > login on an SGI to check.
David> Not to mention *BSD. What we have here is Linux clinging to
David> an ancient directory structure at variance with other major
David> variants of Unix. Please stick with /var/mail, with a
David> compatibility symlink.
David>
David> As for transitional concerns, this should apply to *new
David> systems*. If you currently have a large system which uses
David> /var/spool/mail, stop sendmail for a moment (if you are serious
David> you have an MX backup anyway and you do it in the middle of the
David> night noone will notice), copy over to /var/mail (or move if it
David> is the same file system), move the old /var/spool/mail aside,
David> make the symlink, and archive off or delete the old
David> /var/spool/mail. If it is a truly huge site you might want to
David> use individual symlinks as a transitional measure or announce
David> an outage. Or even make a symlink at /var/mail to handle the
David> transition until you are doing an upgrade anyway.
David>
David> THIS ISN'T THAT HARD! And currently we are at odds with
David> everyone that counts. We should not be requiring app vendors
David> to do #ifdef LINUX any more than we have to.
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