Re: The 'mail' system account

[Sam Watkins <swatkins@fastmail.fm>]

On Sun, Dec 26, 2004 at 07:59:48PM +0700, David Garamond wrote:
> >/var/mail isn't a system account, it's infrastructure.
> 
> By "system account", I meant a Unix account which has UID < 1000 (or is 
> it < 500?).

Ok, I see what you mean.  There is a "mail" user defined with a home
directory of /var/mail.  I think all the users and groups with UID < 100
are permanent fixtures of Debian, defined in the base-passwd package.
Even if you removed this user (which would be a bad idea) /var/mail
would not be deleted.

all I can see that this user / group is used for on my box is creating
lock files in /var/mail, and by procmail (probably for the same purpose)

  ls -l /usr/bin | grep ' mail '

> Thanks for the explanation. I see that the "usermin-mailbox" package 
> defines it, but that's probably not where it originates.

Every package that uses a directory mentions it like that.  This is
necessary for the build process to work.