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Is it possible to use a Maildir as the mailspool for users on a *nix box? I can get procmail to deliver to a Maildir without any problem, but I want to keep all the nifty features like finger knowing when mail last came in and shells alerting users when they have new mail...

UPDATE: So, investigation shows that there is no "default mailspool" on a general level. Finger (the client, not the server) has a hard-coded path. pam_mail is what does the new mail notifications and has its own config, etc... so there is no "one place" to change this.

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  • Somebody still uses finger?
    – Zoredache
    Nov 4, 2010 at 22:41

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The short answer is no, since both finger and the shell rely on the access time of the mailbox in /var/mail (in mbox format) to display such information. However, you could write a daemon that could "biff" logged-in users and modify ~/.plan appropriately to contain such information.

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finger, at least on FC14, is hard-coded to check /var/mail/username. For the shell there is the PAM module pam_mail that understands maildir.

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  • So, pam_mail displays the "you have mail" message when I log in... who writes the "you have new mail" message to my terminal when I'm already logged in?
    – singpolyma
    Nov 5, 2010 at 20:36
  • Oh, it seems that is built right into bash. Ick
    – singpolyma
    Nov 5, 2010 at 20:45

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