mail problem with SUNS & SGI

[Rodian Paul]

Brad J Zoltick writes:

> MAIL BUG INVOLVING SUNs and SGI machines:
> 
> We have a small network of Suns and Sgi machiness. On the
> Suns(SUNOS4.1.1), we have mounted the /usr/spool/mail directory
> on all the Suns to create a common spooling directory for mail.
> 
> Trying this same idea on the SGI(IRIX 3.3.1) machines fails. The
> problem arises from the ownership of the files in /usr/spool/mail,
> (linked to /usr/mail on the SGI machines) becoming owned by daemon
> rather than the recipient.
> 

We've done the reverse, /usr/mail is a symbolic link on all of our IRIS's
to /usr/people/mail which is exported from a main SGI server along with
user's home directories. 

/usr/mail is also a symbolic link on the SUN's to the same place.
Everything works fine on the old SUN's, but the ones running SUN OS 4.? 
trash things, yep 'cos of ownership.

I attribute the problem to the SUN side of things (because the older
OS's work) and I have no intention of fixing it, people here don't
bother using the SUN's for mail anyway, we're just running the SUN's
'till they die.

Anyway, all mail get's routed through our main mailer one way or another,
the mail-host (an IRIS) has "mailhost" as one of it's aliases in the
hosts database on the ypmaster (an IRIS). All users have an alias in
the ypmaster's /usr/lib/aliases to user at mailhost.

This way we can switch the mail-host quickly if we need to. The real
problem with the SUN's running 4.? occurs when you delete from the mailbox.
SUN's "Mail" screws-up the permissions.

So obviuosly my bias is toward the SGI side of things, I'd say go that
route or get SUN to fix their version of Mail.

Cheers.
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