email redirection question

[Ben Scott]

On 9/7/06, Dan Coutu <coutu at snowy-owl.com> wrote:
> A few different possibilities come to mind: use a .forward file in each
> user's home directory ...

  ... or the /etc/aliases file.  That's what I've used in this past,
for this sort of situation.

> ... or share the /var/spool/mail directory between the two systems.

  My recommendation is to never do this.  Unix has somewhat... quaint
ideas about file locking, and is very inconsistent in their usage.
I'm told a shared mail spool *can* be done, if you get all the planets
lined up right (i.e., used a carefully selected set of software, which
all agrees on a locking mechanism, make sure nobody uses any other
software, make sure nobody can change the software config with regard
to locking mechanism, use the right NFS parameters, make sure the NFS
server, NFS client, C library, etc. implement it all correctly,
sacrifice a goat, etc.), but even then, all it takes is one mis-step
and everything goes to hell.

-- Ben