Re: SUMMARY: How to mount /var/mail?

From: Casper H.S. Dik (casper@fwi.uva.nl)
Date: Fri Mar 04 1994 - 11:27:43 CST


ghazi@hardees.rutgers.edu (Kaveh R. Ghazi) writes:

> Would you please explain why "noac" (no attribute caching) is
>needed for mail and what tradeoffs you make by activating it?

The noac attribute is needed so clients will ask the server for
the file attributes every time they access or look at the file.

Ths costs: each access to /var/spool/mail goes over the net.
The benefit: when mail arrives on the server or another client,
shortly after attribute fetching (mail reading), the client will
note. As you know, mail readers usually work in a read followed
by writeback (update Status: header) or truncate of the mailbox.
If attributes are cached on the client, all mail arriving during
the lifetime of the cached attributes will be lost when the mail
user agent updates the mailbox.

Casper



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