Re: [Exim] Problems with writing to spool

Philip Hazel writes:
> On Thu, 10 Aug 2000, Mark Baker wrote:
>
> > /var/spool/mail is traditional in quite a few versions of unix, including
> > all early linux systems, and so debian started off using it. The FHS (linux
> > file hierarchy standard) specifies /var/mail, but debian haven't changed to
> > that because of the difficulty of migrating existing systems.
>
> Solaris uses /var/mail, which is why I'm used to that.

At least SunOS 4, Ultrix, ConvexOS and Tru64 UNIX all use
/var/spool/mail. I've always heard it called the "mail spool" and
that's what I call it myself. It's probably a BSD v SysV thing.

Incoming mail from external sources gets spooled (to /var/spool/exim
in Exim's case) while the MTA decides what to do with it and then
the mail it delivers locally gets spooled (to /var/spool/mail say)
for the MUAs to pick up. They're both spools as far as I can see.

--Malcolm

--
Malcolm Beattie <mbeattie@???>
Unix Systems Programmer
Oxford University Computing Services