Bug#42052: Bug#45052: [OLD PROPOSAL] /var/mail and /var/spool/mail

[Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es>]

On Mon, 26 Feb 2001, Julian Gilbey wrote:

> Section 12.6: the para which currently reads:
>
>    The mail spool is `/var/spool/mail' and the interface to send a mail
>    message is `/usr/sbin/sendmail' (as per the FHS).  ...
>
> should be changed to:
>
>    The mail spool is `/var/mail' and the interface to send a mail
>    message is /usr/sbin/sendmail (as per the FHS).  On older systems,
>    the mail spool may be physically located in /var/spool/mail, but
>    all access to the mail spool should be via the /var/mail symlink.
>
> A new section 10.1.3 should be inserted into policy:
>
>   10.1.3 The system-wide mail directory
>
>    The system-wide mail directory is /var/mail.  This directory is
>    part of the base system and should not owned by any particular mail
>    agents.  The use of the old location /var/spool/mail is deprecated,
>    even though the spool may still be physically located there.  To
>    maintain partial upgrade compatibility for systems which have
>    /var/spool/mail as their physical mail spool, packages using
>    /var/mail > must depend on either libc6 (>= 2.1.3-13), or on
>    base-files (>= 2.2.0), or on later versions of either one of these
>    packages.

I second this.