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 ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) System Administrator, CCSO Workstation Services Group http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/roth -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
