[K12OSN] /spool/mail question

["Terrell Prudé, Jr."]

Julius Szelagiewicz wrote:

>>This isn't LTSP specific -- but is there a proper way (or a reason NOT
>>to) to use NFS to export the /var/spool/mail directory from my email
>>server to all my LTSP servers?  It would make email programs a lot
>>easier to set up, since "local mail" would literally be the actual email
>>system mail.
>>
>>I'm not sure what happens with someone on machine1 sends local mail to
>>username1 at the same time that username1 gets a *real* email on the
>>email server.  Does NFS locking work in this case?
>>
>>I obviously don't want to break email -- but if all the computers shared
>>a common /var/spool/mail, it would add some convienience.
>>
>>Anyone doing this?  Is this a common thing in *nix systems?  Is this an
>>insane idea?
>>
>>Thanks a bunch,
>>-Shawn
>>    
>>
>Shawn,
> theoretically it sounds like a good idea, practically it is not. first,
>nfs locking is advisory, that is several processes writing to the same
>file are apt to destroy it, and mail resides in *one* file. if you want a
>central repository, select a machine that will carry all the mail (not
>necessary the same as mail server), run imapd on it and use a webmail
>setup. this allows you access to mail from just about anywhere and all
>the mail sits on one machine (this machine needs to have all the user
>accounts). this setup is pretty straightforward and it works well. julius
>  
>

Here's how the theory can work for email.  Share out /home and run 
something like courier-imap, which uses the maildir format instead of 
the single-file mbox format.  I like the maildir format because each 
email is stored in a separate file on the hard disk, so I'm far less 
likely to lose all of my email if something happens to the filesystem.  
Make sure you're running 100Mb or better with this NFS share; 100Mb is 
cheap these days.

That said, it sounds like Julius's idea is certainly a good one.  I wish 
I had time to try it out myself.

--TP