Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 129384
quickstart guide in manual is wrong with regard to local spool folder
Last modified: 2007-11-30 17:10:47 EST
Description of problem: The default location for local mail seems to be incorrect on FC2. Users need to change the default location to read local mail. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): sylpheed-0.9.10-2 How reproducible: Easy on FC2. Steps to Reproduce: 1. As a standard user (UID not equal to 0) start sylpheed first time and configure for local mail. Note that there is no mail in inbox. 2.In sylpheed check the tab configuration --> common preferences. On that window look under the Receive tab and inspect the spool dir. 3. Compare with $MAIL in the environment (echo $MAIL; env | grep MAIL) 4. Adjust the spool dir and now mail is visible. Actual results: Without special user configuration uses do not see mail. Expected results: First time users should see mail in the standard location for FC2... I would expect $MAIL to be used. More importantly.. I would expect the default to match the location that the transport agent uses by default. Additional info: $ env | grep mail MAIL=/var/spool/mail/me
Actually /var/mail is provided as symlink for /var/spool/mail. and /var/mail is defined as vaild path in FHS; http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#VARMAILUSERMAILBOXFILES So what incorrect are you saying?
I think I was caught by the same error that the original fedora mailing list poster was. I setup a local mail box and saw no mail following the standard prompted flow of the new user setup and the online in a hurry setup. Then I started searching for options to correct what ever the problem was and noticed that my $MAIL and spool dir did not match. To be able to change that I had to click on incorporate from spool to un grey /var/mail so I could change it to match my $MAIL. Had I simply clicked on "Incorporate from spool" I would have seen mail. So the title of this bug report is wrong. As an old school type (prior to Filesystem Hierarchy Standard) I expected $MAIL to be noticed and used. I think asking for this would be a mistake on my part given the FHS. If there is a bug, one place need attention. * Initial setup sequence for the first mail box. - First I had to set the location -- if unsure click OK I clicked OK. - next I see Preferences for new account and I seleced Protocol [None (local)] under the Basic tab set smtp host... Click throught the other tabs nothing to change and click OK. + There is no step in the initial setup that takes me to Configure --> common preferences to click on incorporate from spool. It would be nice if the new account setup for Protocol [None (local)] would set "incorporate from spool" in common preferences as part of the initial setup. If this is not done for reasons I cannot see then in the documentation please add a sixth step to the bullet list in the documentation. 2.1 Setup for reading your Unix mailbox in a hurry one additional item to inspect and then check "incorporate from spool" under common preferences. This is the quickest GUI based mail tool I have seen -- excelent stuff.
It's a documentation bug. The manual is wrong. I've sent a notification to the Sylpheed Documentation Project. If there are other parts in the manual you'd like to see improved or added, the project is looking for contributors: http://sylpheeddoc.sourceforge.net/ [...] "Incorporate from spool" is a global option. Hence it can be found in the "Common Preferences" dialog only. It cannot be toggled for individual mail accounts. Something like that is not implemented in Sylpheed. It would be trivial to enable the option by default. But such a change ought to happen in the upstream project. Because a common type of local mail folder usage is to not poll mail from within Sylpheed, but to let mail be delivered to you, e.g. via procmail. And since it is a global option, it would also be wrong to make this option appear in the "Receive" tab of the account creation dialog for local mailboxes. It would be active for all accounts.