In our last exciting episode, Manoj Srivastava expounded thusly: > What UNIX distributions do /var/mail ? DIGITAL UNIX has stuff > in /usr/spool/mail/$USER; HPUX does /usr/mail/$USER, and Linux has > always done /var/spool/mail/$USER. I note that POSIX.2 does not deign > to specify the lcation of mail spool directories or mailboxes.
AFAIK, the Unix 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. Although this has all been said before, I'll just put in my vote of agreement for the proposed compromise. I think we should say that eventually the mailboxes should be in /var/mail, but that currently, as a transitional feature, they can be located in either /var/mail or /var/spool/mail, with a symlink in the other place. Then we can remove the compatibility mandate at some point in the future when most of the distributions have migrated to the preferred location. Being a distribution developer myself, I think this is quite a fair compromise. -- 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]
