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Subject: Re: mail deliveries to NFS mount (sort of)
From: Wietse Venema (wietseporcupine.org)
Date: Wed Jun 14 2000 - 05:38:01 CDT

Matthias Andree wrote:
> wietseporcupine.org (Wietse Venema) writes:
>
> > I do not understand the question. How can stat() of a .forward file
> > complete when its NFS file system can't be mounted?
>
> I can't, and that's what this is about: How can you distinguish "there
> is no .forward file" (just stuff the mail into the users mail box) from

Please lift your bum. Walk to a dictionary. Look up the difference
between COMPLETE and SUCCEED. Thank you. You can sit down again now.

And now I ask my question for the third time.

How can stat() of .forward COMPLETE when its NFS file system can't
be mounted?

What broken NFS implementation is this, if you aren't using soft
mounts?

Unlike qmail, Postfix has no hard-coded knowledge of where .forward
files are supposed to live. For Postfix there's no reason why
.forward files should live in user home directories at all.

If I understand you correctly, you are suggesting that Postfix not
only try every pathname in the expansion of $forward_path, but that
Postfix first look at every parent directory of every pathname in
the expansion of $forward_path, and that Postfix take some special
action when the parent directory does not exist.

Why limit that special action to the parent directories of .forward
files? Why not do the same thing with the parent directories of
mailbox files? Mailboxes can be configured to live in user home
directories, even when .forward files aren't.

Why limit that special action to the parent directories of files
that often appear below user home directories? What about other
files? Depending on the mail configuration, almost any file that
Postfix needs could come from a remote file system. For example,
a user-owned alias database might live below the owner's home
directory.

And the list goes on and on.

I prefer not to code-bloat Postfix with workarounds for every open
and stat call and give you the warm fuzzy feeling that you can run
mail reliably as an NFS client when in fact IT JUST DOES NOT WORK.

        Wietse