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Re: paths.h



   From: Alex Buell
   Date: Sun, 26 Dec 1999 12:18:28 +0000 (GMT)

   Is paths.h part of glibc?

Yes it is (too lazy to check yourself?).  It is included for
compatibility with BSD.

                             If so, why is 

   #define _PATH_MAILDIR   "/var/mail"

Since that's the location specified by the current Linux FHS.

   and not:

   #define _PATH_MAILDIR   "/var/spool/mail"

That's the location used by the majority of Linux distributions out
there.

   This screws up machines that uses /var/spool/mail. Surely this should have
   been left to the user/distributors to set themselves?

It sure screws things up.  And it should definitely be left to the
users/distributors to make sure things are screwed down again :-).
Any sensible mail-handling program should let you configure the
location where the mailboxes can be found, both when you compile the
stuff and at run-time.  Glibc only provides a sensible default, which
is `/var/mail', since that's what all future Linux-systems are
supposed to use.

Until you recompile all your mail handling programs, you'll probably
want to do:

   # ln -s /var/spool/mail /var/mail

Mark

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