[comp.sys.sgi] Remote Mailbox?

marcc@yoyodyne.ncsa.uiuc.edu (Marc Cooper) (06/19/91)

Ok.. here's one that MUST have an answer that I just missed.

Is it possible to have mailbox look to a directory on another machine other 
than the one you're on?  It seems this could be accomplished using the 
-C envelope-counter  flag, by somehow specifying the "counting program" to 
be an rsh over to the desired machine, looking at the proper file, etc.

Someone MUST have tackled this by now.  Wanna save me some time?

-Marc Cooper
 marcc@ncsa.uiuc.edu

andru@myth.rad.sgi.com (Andrew Myers) (06/23/91)

In article <1991Jun18.192958.1652@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> marcc@yoyodyne.ncsa.uiuc.edu (Marc Cooper) writes:
>Is it possible to have mailbox look to a directory on another machine other 
>than the one you're on?  It seems this could be accomplished using the 
>-C envelope-counter  flag, by somehow specifying the "counting program" to 
>be an rsh over to the desired machine, looking at the proper file, etc.

If the remote directory is NFS-mounted, then it should work fine. If not,
you are probably out of luck. Contrary to what you might think, mailbox
does not poll your mailbox periodically like, say, xbiff. Instead, it is
directly notified whenever a change is made to your mailbox. The
-C envelope-counter is only executed when a change is detected. This
strategy minimizes the load which mailbox places on your system.

Andrew