Subject: Re: fhs

From: Richard Kettlewell <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Aug 96 11:07:00 +0100 (BST)

Raul Miller writes:

>I think you should look at this issue a bit differently.  In one
>sense, both policies are broken -- delivering mail to a spool
>directory requires sgid programs for the user to read mail (in the
>usual sense).  A more secure and more robust solution would be to
>deliver mail directly into the user's home directory.  For example,
>      echo $HOME/Mailbox >$HOME/.forward

This is a bad idea if the home directory is NFS-mounted from a remote
system; IME file locking under NFS is very easy to get wrong.  (Not
that all mailers get locking right even on local file systems...)

Additionally, a system might well have different backup or quota
policies for mail and ordinary user data, which is a good reason to
keep them separate.

-- 
Richard Kettlewell  [email-masked]  [email-masked]
                           http://www.elmail.co.uk/staff/richard/