Xemacs and missing /usr/spool link
Hi all, I finally tracked down a problem with Xemacs19 and gnus, and hope this can help someone else. I'm tracking unstable, and generally having very few problems (thanks!). The past few days, however, xemacs has refused to recognize that I have mail in my mailbox, and gnus doesn't see it either. Xemacs, gnus, and some other packages (efs, prim, reportmail, rmail, crontab, and vm), all look for mail in /usr/spool/mail/user. On Debian systems, this is a symlink to /var/spool/mail/user, so all is well. This symlink seems to have been removed by some package recently, however, and problems began developing. Was this a deliberate policy decision? I seem to have missed discussion of it. I currently have added a line to my .emacs (so display-time will show the status of the mailbox): (setq rmail-spool-directory /var/spool/mail/) and one to my .gnus: (setq nnmail-spool-file /var/spool/mail/npreyer) and this works. Or I could replace the /usr/spool link. What's the best way to handle this? xemacs 19.16-1 Thanks! --Norris -- Norris Preyer (541) 962-3310 (office) Physics Program (541) 962-3873 (fax) Eastern Oregon University [EMAIL PROTECTED] La Grande, OR 97850http://physics.eou.edu/npreyer.html finger [EMAIL PROTECTED] for PGP key -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
RE: Xemacs and missing /usr/spool link
Norris Preyer wrote: Debian systems, this is a symlink to /var/spool/mail/user, so all is well. This symlink seems to have been removed by some package recently, however, and problems began developing. I had the same problem with RedHat 4.1 when I tried to install a pop3 server I don't know about debian policy (as much as I really like debian...im not a big fan of the policies) re-inserting the sym link shouldn't hurt anything IMHO I would suggest strongly leaving OUT the symlink My rational: acording to the filesystem standards /var/spool is proper and /usr/spool is not...thus leaving out the link breaks packages which are wrong This allows the problems to be found and fixed so that someday noone will need the sym link Thats what I did I got the pop3d package from sunsite... the docs said it looks in /var/spool/mail ..the man page said /var/spool/mail it never worked...then I inserted the sym link and it worked again I looked through the source and found that the program looked for /usr/spool... so I deleted the sym link and fixed the source...1 line of editing and it worked again unfortunatly I was unable to contact the maintainers of this particular server... and that was b4 my recent hard drive crash so really...in truth (as it is YOUR system) its up to you the question is do you want things to work the first time... or to show up as broken and work right after you fix them? -Steve -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
