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