From owner-freebsd-current Tue Oct 29 15:17:39 1996 Return-Path: owner-current Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id PAA07778 for current-outgoing; Tue, 29 Oct 1996 15:17:39 -0800 (PST) Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (phaeton.Artisoft.COM [198.17.250.211]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id PAA07767 for ; Tue, 29 Oct 1996 15:17:34 -0800 (PST) Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id QAA22180; Tue, 29 Oct 1996 16:11:21 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199610292311.QAA22180@phaeton.artisoft.com> Subject: Re: /var/mail (was: re: Help, permission problems...) To: MRC@CAC.Washington.EDU (Mark Crispin) Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1996 16:11:21 -0700 (MST) Cc: j@uriah.heep.sax.de, roberto@keltia.freenix.fr, current@FreeBSD.org, scrappy@ki.net In-Reply-To: from "Mark Crispin" at Oct 29, 96 01:59:27 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-current@FreeBSD.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > You still don't understand. > > Your "mail.local" is not the only mail delivery program, nor is it typical of > mail delivery programs on UNIX. Most mail delivery programs use .lock files. Actually, I would think that if it didn't go through mail.local, then it isn't in a local user's mailbox: it's still in the delivery queue for sendmail/smail/mmdf/IMAP/etc. I think the only legal access to the local user's mailbox is via mail.local (incoming) and POP3/IMAP4/ELM/other-mail-reader (content browsing and manipulation). That basically means that the storage type is abstracted from the act of transport for most purposes, and *should* be abstracted from the act of reference. There is a MIME library, but licensing restrictions make it practically useless. 8-(. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.