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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>