You seem to have confused what exim considers its 'spool' directory
(where it stores messages that havent been delivered yet), with the
'system' mailspool (where users mailboxes are kept).
/home/user/mail, is usually where local MUA's (mail _clients_) store the
users extra folders.
Normally, _exim's_ spool directory is '/var/spool/exim' It creates a few
folders under there for temporary storage of various information,
including messages that it receives until it delivers them.
On a 'standard' RedHat system, user mailboxes are set up to be in
/var/spool/mail/USERNAME, in a format known as 'Berkely' or 'mbox'
So if exim receives a message from another server, it will store it
temporarily in /var/spool/exim/input/MESSAGE-ID, then, assuming the
message is addressed to a local user, will append it to
/var/spool/mail/USERNAME..
Then, if the user uses pine/elm/mutt locally, that program will read
their messages from /var/spool/mail/USERNAME. If they then instruct
their mailreader to save it in another folder, that will usually be
/home/USERNAME/mail/FOLDERNAME. The exact structure and location of the
mailreaders folder is, of course, up to the mailreader.
If users are accessing mail via POP3, then the POP server will read the
mail from /var/spool/mail/USERNAME, and hand it to the POP client. This
is usually on another PC, so /home/USERNAME/mail isnt used. In the case
of IMAP, it works similarly, except since IMAP is direct mailbox access
protocol, rather than just a download like POP, an IMAP server will
usuaully allow the user to store folders on the server, and this might
be /home/USERNAME/mail, depending on the IMAP server.
On Mon, 3 Jun 2002, Brandon Mercer wrote:
> Hi, I've got a problem with exim spooling to my users
> mailboxes correctly. Let me tell you my setup so that
> you might better direct me with your reply. I'm
> running a server with RedHat 7.3 and I've installed
> sendmail as default, compiled exim to spool into my
> /var/spool/mail directory, and I've pointed the script
> that starts sendmail to the exim binary and all is
> well. I can recieve mail (to a point) and I can
> compose messages that get stuck in (what I consider a
> spooling state). After I compiled exim I noticed a
> bunch of folders within /var/spool/mail including one
> called input, where I find a bunch of text messages
> from my tests where I've tried to send myself messages
> from yahoo and where ever else. Does anyone have any
> idea how to get the messages from that folder into the
> users mailboxes... which I think are in
> /home/USER/mail? Thanks for your help.
> Brandon
>
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