Re: [Exim] Problems with writing to spool

ph10@??? (Philip Hazel) wrote on 09.08.00 in <Pine.SOL.4.21.0008092029040.4327-100000@???>:

> On 9 Aug 2000, Kai Henningsen wrote:
>
> > Well, given that (on Debian at least) one is (by default) /var/spool/exim/
> > and the other is /var/spool/mail/, I think of the two as "Exim spool" and
> > "mail spool".
>
> Aarrgghh!! I didn't realise Debian (ab)used the word "spool" like that,

Well, those are certainly the traditional places for these things in my
experience including non-Debian systems. I think I heard new SysV uses
/var/mail/ instead, but I've never used such a system (that I can
remember).

> though I have heard people talk of "the mail spool". How very confusing.
> I think of a spool as a temporary place of storage for something in
> transit, which (conventional) mailboxes are not. So I would interpret
> "mail spool" as the Exim spool unless something alerted me otherwise.

/var/spool/news/ anyone?

It's been debated several times on the linux-fsstnd/linux-fhs lists, but
nobody came up with a better scheme that actually got wide support.
Tradition usually beat cleanup attempts (ignoring here people can't seem
to agree on stuff like what constitutes temporary storage anyway).

MfG Kai