SUMMARY: ow to change the default "/var/mail" dir of sendmail?

From: Georges Chan (gchan@asl.com.hk)
Date: Wed Jul 10 1996 - 22:14:33 CDT


Hi yall,
        Thanks to the following people and their quick response:
        
        Tony Ching-Tung Wu <tonywu@transend.com.tw>
        Matthew Stier - Imonics Corporation <matthew.stier@imonics.com>
        "Patrick O'Brien" <pobrien@cfa.harvard.edu
        daves@adnc.com (David Schiffrin)
        Kevin.Sheehan@uniq.com.au (Kevin Sheehan {Consulting Poster Child})
        
        The answer was to:
        
        1) Hack the daemon that deliver local mail: /usr/lib/mail.local.
           For more detail on it look at the man page.
        
           One way is to recompile it (but so far I found only BSD versions)
        
           Another way is to replace it with something else, such as:
           smail, or procmail. If so, do not forget to change sendmail.cf
           Mlocal entry.
        
        2) /usr/lib/sendmail has also the "/var/mail/spool" directory
           hardcoded in it. To fix it, get the sendmail source code and
           recompile it. Also change the spooling directory in the
           /etc/mail/sendmail.cf if needed.
           
        3) If (1) & (2) have been done sucessfully, then fix the path for user
           mail/mailx/mailtool.
           
           One way is to set the MAIL environment to point to the new directory.
           
           Another way is to add some rc file in /etc/mail namely mailx.rc
           Mail.rc, e.g:
           
           set MAIL /newdir/$LOGNAME
           
Hope that this summary will help anyone who may hit the same problem!

FYI, I found this from the sendmail FAQ:

> * How can I get sendmail to deliver local mail to $HOME/.mail
> instead of into /usr/spool/mail (or /usr/mail)?
>
> Again, this is a local mailer issue, not a sendmail issue.
> Either modify your local mailer (source code will be
> required) or change the program called in the "local" mailer
> configuration description to be a new program that does this
> local delivery. One program that is capable of doing this is
> "procmail", although there are probably many others as well.
>
> You might be interested in reading the paper ``HLFSD:
> Delivering Email to your $HOME'' available in the Proceedings
> of the USENIX System Administration (LISA VII) Conference
> (November 1993). This is also available via public FTP from
> ftp.cs.columbia.edu in /pub/hlfsd/{README.hlfsd,hlfsd.ps}.

Regards,

Georges Chan.

PS: Sorry for my .signature if it causes some inconveniences.



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