The FHS standard specifies /var/mail as the mail spool, but it also says
/var/mail may be a symbolic link to another directory, and there is no
requirement to physically move the mail spool to this location.

Therefore, no package will move files around from one location to another
on upgrades, and /var/mail will be the real directory only in newly
installed systems.

Since /var/spool/mail has been in use for several years now, we need
also to provide backwards compatibility for some time yet.

So, to summarize:

* New systems (Debian 2.2 or later) will have /var/mail as a real
directory and /var/spool/mail as a symlink to it.

* Upgraded systems will have /var/spool/mail as the real directory
and /var/mail as a symlink to it.


People upgrading from previous releases who prefer the new physical
location /var/mail over the old one may do the required changes in their
systems if they do it with extreme care and know what they are doing. The
packages in charge of ensuring that /var/mail exists (currently, libc6 and
base-files) will not touch it at all if it already exists as a directory
or a symlink.


Santiago Vila <sanvila@debian.org>