Quoth Jerry A! on Fri, Jan 12, 2001:
> On Fri, Jan 12, 2001 at 12:37:27PM -0800, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
> : Why is /usr/bin/mail a symlink to exim?
>
> Sendmail compatibility mostly. I don't know what scripts will break, so
> I just create the same links that sendmail does. Thus things like "echo
> foo | mail someone@???" don't break.
>
> I know that exim doesn't allow the user to read their mail.
It's still not a good idea. Many scripts expect /usr/bin/mail to
accept flags such as -s that Exim (or any other MTA, for that
matter) will either not understand or misunderstand.
> If I need /usr/bin/mail to be an MUA, then I'll install mailx and relink
> /usr/bin/mail to point to /usr/bin/mailx. However, I don't currently
> have a single system I'm working on where people use mail(x) as their
> MUA.
But I would advise you to do it anyway.
Vadik.
--
If there was anything that depressed him more than his own
cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as
real life.
-- Terry Pratchett, "Guards! Guards!"