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Date:      Sun, 3 Dec 2000 22:52:01 -0800 (PST)
From:      mike@hyperreal.org
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   $MAIL w/qmail defaults to /var/mail/userid?
Message-ID:  <20001204065201.27094.qmail@hyperreal.org>

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I am having a problem with the MAIL environment variable.

This is on a FreeBSD 4.2-STABLE system that was upgraded from 4.1-STABLE.
We have installed and are running qmail on this system, in place of
sendmail. Mail is stored in a Mailbox file in each user's home directory,
rather than /var/mail. Therefore, I want to have the MAIL environment
variable for all users point to this file rather than /var/mail/userid.

I have edited the default class in /etc/login.conf so that the setenv line
reads:

  :setenv=MAIL=~/Mailbox,BLOCKSIZE=K,FTP_PASSIVE_MODE=YES,FOO=bar:\

And I have run cap_mkdb to regenerate the database. The user's
/etc/master.passwd entry has nothing in the login class field, so the
default class should be in effect. 

However, on this system, upon login, $MAIL is always set to
/var/mail/userid. Yet $FOO is set to bar, so something strange is going
on.

I have ruled out the possibility of post-login scripts like .cshrc
interfering. There is nothing in ~/.* referring to /var/mail. There is
nothing in /etc/* referring to /var/mail. I also ruled out the shell; the
user's login shell is /bin/tcsh, nothing too unusual. I tried with /bin/sh
and got the same results.

So how is $MAIL becoming /var/mail/userid?

It's especially puzzling becasue I can't duplicate the problem on a fresh
installation of FreeBSD 4.2-RELEASE with vanilla sendmail. The exact same
login.conf entry is processed just fine, and $MAIL is the absolute path to
the user's Mailbox file in their home directory, just as I intended.

'strings /usr/bin/login | fgrep mail' reveals that /var/mail is compiled
into login(1), but big deal.. the 4.2-RELEASE system has the exact same
binary (I checked).

Any ideas?

TIA,
-Mike



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