30 lines
1.1 KiB
Plaintext
30 lines
1.1 KiB
Plaintext
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The FHS standard specifies /var/mail as the mail spool, but it also says
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/var/mail may be a symbolic link to another directory, and there is no
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requirement to physically move the mail spool to this location.
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Therefore, no package will move files around from one location to another
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on upgrades, and /var/mail will be the real directory only in newly
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installed systems.
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Since /var/spool/mail has been in use for several years now, we need
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also to provide backwards compatibility for some time yet.
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So, to summarize:
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* New systems (Debian 2.2 or later) will have /var/mail as a real
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directory and /var/spool/mail as a symlink to it.
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* Upgraded systems will have /var/spool/mail as the real directory
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and /var/mail as a symlink to it.
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People upgrading from previous releases who prefer the new physical
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location /var/mail over the old one may do the required changes in their
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systems if they do it with extreme care and know what they are doing. The
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packages in charge of ensuring that /var/mail exists (currently, libc6 and
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base-files) will not touch it at all if it already exists as a directory
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or a symlink.
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Santiago Vila <sanvila@debian.org>
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