Date: Sat, 08 Jun 1996 09:13:51 +0100 From: "Gary Palmer" <gpalmer@FreeBSD.ORG> To: "Karl Denninger, MCSNet" <karl@mcs.com> Cc: pst@shockwave.com (Paul Traina), nate@sri.MT.net, softweyr@xmission.com, security@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD's /var/mail permissions Message-ID: <4393.834221631@palmer.demon.co.uk> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 07 Jun 1996 16:48:01 CDT." <m0uS9Nx-000IDOC@venus.mcs.com>
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"Karl Denninger, MCSNet" wrote in message ID <m0uS9Nx-000IDOC@venus.mcs.com>: > Mail locking, to be effective, must *work across machines* so that NFS > mounts of the mail directory work. > flock() cannot be trusted to work in this environment, and in fact doesn't > even attempt to work on FreeBSD. > Does this mean we should give up on using mail? No, it means you should give up on using NFS mounting of /var/mail (or /var/spool/mail, or wherever else your local OS sticks it). NFS is an abombination at the best of times, and NFS locking even more so. THere are far more elegant solutions to the problem of distributing mail to client workstations, namely IMAP and POP. Sure, it means that people who use /usr/bin/mail to read their e-mail will be stumped, but I think that the pro's of using this form of mail distribution far outweigh the cons. (The fact that my favourite mailer, MH supports POP, SPOP, etc, has nothing to do with it :-) Gary -- Gary Palmer FreeBSD Core Team Member FreeBSD: Turning PC's into workstations. See http://www.FreeBSD.ORG/ for info
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