I am mostly just a “user” of opensuse. I installed an 11.2 version (clean install not an upgrade), and from what I have read, the default mail system has changed to use postfix instead of sendmail.
The mailbox default location has changed from /var/mail/<user> to /<userdir>/Maildir
However, the environment variables in /etc/profile have not changed. It is still setting MAIL=/var/mail/<user> (which does not exist), and there is no entry for MAILDIR.
Is this an oversight? Any idea if it will be fixed? I know I can set it up in profiles.local, but should not have to if it is a new default.
Thanks.
Correction: the MAIL variable may be set in /etc/profile, but not sure where it is set.
What program needs to use $MAIL?
I normally use alpine as a mail client, but decided to try mutt. mutt by default looks to see if there is a $MAIL and uses that. It will also lookfor $MAILDIR if there is no $MAIL.
I have an openSuse 11.0 machine and an 11.2 so am now dealing with this new default mail system.
I was also configuring gkrellmd, which now has a different path to the mail files. I had to do some digging to figure out why my 11.0 gkrellmd config was working and my 11.2 config was not. This is what started me looking at the $MAIL and $MAILDIR issue.