On Fri, 12 Nov 1999, Stuart Children wrote:
> I've compiled and installed exim 3.03 on a box running a (quite
> customised) RedHat 6.0 install. Previously it was running sendmail, as is
> default in RH. My problem is that when I log in, I get told "No mail."
> even if I do have some. Here's some background:
>
> For the compile I set:
> SPOOL_DIRECTORY=/var/spool/exim
> in Local/Makefile.
>
> In the configuration file, I've got
> file = /var/spool/exim/${local_part}
> in the local_delivery transport.
Usually /var/spool/exim/ is used for mail in transit (incoming and
outgoing mail that has been recieved but not yet delivered) and
/var/spool/mail or /usr/spool/mail (sometimes the 2 are sym-linked
together) is used for mail that *has* been delivered.
> After compiling, installing, setup up the config, and doing a bit of
> testing, I linked /usr/lib/sendmail and /usr/sbin/sendmail to
> /usr/local/exim/bin/exim, killed off sendmail, and started exim. I greped
> around for spool/mail, and as a result I set:
> MAIL="/var/spool/exim/$USER"
> in /etc/profile, and in /etc/login.defs I put:
> MAIL_DIR /var/spool/exim
>
> Now, mail is getting sent, and is arriving fine, with things going into
> /var/spool/exim.
>
> Pine wasn't picking it up however. It was working fine with sendmail.
> 'pine -conf' says "# Normal Unix default is the local INBOX (usually
> /usr/spool/mail/$USER).", but it was clearly using /var/spool/mail/$USER -
> I guess RH changed the default that instead. I've around this by setting:
> inbox-path=/var/spool/exim/$USER
> in /etc/pine.conf. Using $MAIL (which is getting set OK - I checked that)
> would seem more sensible on Pine's behalf...
>
> Now, when I log in, I get greeted with "No mail.", despite the fact that
> there is some: if I run "mail", then I can see it there fine. Pine picks
> it up too.
Your shell or similar "knows" to look in /usr/spool/mail/$USER.
I think you want to restore your pine setup, and change the exim
setup so that
SPOOL_DIRECTORY=/usr/spool/mail
or
SPOOL_DIRECTORY=/var/spool/mail
Dr. Andrew C. Aitchison Computer Officer, DPMMS, Cambridge
A.C.Aitchison@??? http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~werdna