Filesystem Hierarchy Standard
The mail spool must be accessible through /var/mail and the mail
spool files must take the form <username>.[footnote 36]
User mailbox files in this location must be stored in the standard
UNIX mailbox format.
BEGIN RATIONALE
The logical location for this directory was changed from
/var/spool/mail in order to bring FHS in-line with nearly
every UNIX implementation. This change is important for
inter-operability since a single /var/mail is often shared
between multiple hosts and multiple UNIX implementations (despite NFS
locking issues).
It is important to note that there is no requirement to physically move
the mail spool to this location. However, programs and header files
must be changed to use /var/mail.
END RATIONALE
[36] Note that /var/mail
may be a symbolic link to another directory.
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Translated by troff2html v1.5 on 29 March 2002 by Daniel Quinlan