[comp.mail.uucp] Why put paths file in /usr/lib/uucp?

sean@utoday.UUCP (Sean Fulton) (09/19/90)

I'm curious why the default on smail is to put the output from
pathalis in /usr/lib/uucp, instead of /usr/lib/mail, or somewhere
else.

It seems strange, especially if your ``news'' user wouldn't normally
be able to write in /usr/lib/uucp.

Again, I'm just sort of curious what the thinking was on this.

-- 
Sean Fulton					sean@utoday.com
UNIX Today!					(516) 562-5430
 /* The opinions expressed above are not those of my employer */

woods@eci386.uucp (Greg A. Woods) (09/19/90)

In article <1807@utoday.UUCP> sean@utoday.UUCP (Sean Fulton) writes:
> I'm curious why the default on smail is to put the output from
> pathalis in /usr/lib/uucp, instead of /usr/lib/mail, or somewhere
> else.

Why not?  It seems to me that it was simply the author's personal
choice.  My personal choice is /usr/local/lib/smail.  (I also put the
rest of the smail2.5 stuff in there, including mkfnames and friends.)

A good choice on a Sun or SysVr4.0 would be /var/local/smail/paths,
since the paths file may vary in size a bit, and is more of an
intermediate, automatically generated, database, not a configuration
file per se.

> It seems strange, especially if your ``news'' user wouldn't normally
> be able to write in /usr/lib/uucp.

That's OK.  I do indeed run my map unpacker as "usenet", but make the
file writable by group "news".  One could easily have a user mail, or
smail, or just uucp or uucpadm, to do the unpacking.
-- 
						Greg A. Woods

woods@{eci386,gate,robohack,ontmoh,tmsoft}.UUCP
+1-416-443-1734 [h]  +1-416-595-5425 [w]    VE3-TCP	Toronto, Ontario CANADA

jpr@murphy.com (Jean-Pierre Radley) (09/21/90)

In article <1807@utoday.UUCP> sean@utoday.UUCP (Sean Fulton) writes:
>I'm curious why the default on smail is to put the output from
>pathalis in /usr/lib/uucp, instead of /usr/lib/mail, or somewhere
>else.
>
>It seems strange, especially if your ``news'' user wouldn't normally
>be able to write in /usr/lib/uucp.

Neither "news" nor any other user on your system would normally be writing
to /usr/lib/uucp.

Where things are put is somewhat arbitrary, and frequently just a habit. But if
it's uucp/uucico/uux that are pushing along the file transfers, the mail, and
the news, why not have the paths file in /usr/lib/uucp?
-- 
Jean-Pierre Radley		jpr@jpradley		CIS:72160,131