What is the difference between /var/mail/XXX and /var/spool/mail/XXX

Question

I look exactly the same : enter image description here But What makes me suprised is that they are synchronous.

[This](http://lists.debian.org/lsb-spec/1999/01/msg00065.html) might help! — , Jan 20 '12 at 06:27

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 20 '12 at 06:30

6

/var/spool/mail is a symbolic link to /var/mail on my Debian/Sid system:

 % ls -ld /var/mail /var/spool/mail
 drwxrwsr-x 2 root mail 4096 Dec 31 17:46 /var/mail
 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root    7 May 12  2011 /var/spool/mail -> ../mail

answered Jan 20 '12 at 06:30

Basile Starynkevitch

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thx, /var/mail is a symbolic link to /var/spool/mail in RHEL 5 – 爱国者 Jan 21 '12 at 00:57
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Gentoo also links `/var/mail` to `/var/spool/mail`. – 比尔盖子 Feb 03 '15 at 17:10

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 20 '12 at 06:39

What you ask is really a matter of preferences; meaning: whatever mail delivery daemon you have in use on your system can use either or.

More specifically, it's a mere matter of preference of options laid out by the FHS.

Typically, on more complex mail configurations, things like mail queue, deferred messages, etc are stored in a structure in /var/spool/, independent of /var/mail.

You can see /var/mail used separately from /var/spool/mail (AKA: not symlinked). Local mail will end up in /var/mail - while SMTP daemon handling email for virtual mailboxes, etc will happen in /var/spool/mail

What is the difference between /var/mail/XXX and /var/spool/mail/XXX

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