HLFSD: Delivering Email to Your $HOME
Erez Zadok
Computer Science Department
Columbia University
Alexander Dupuy
System Management ARTS
Abstract
We consider the problem of enabling users to access their mailbox
files from any host on our local network, and not only on one
designated "home machine". We require a solution which will not
introduce any new single points of failure, force us to modify mail
transfer agents and user agents, or require changes to the operating
system kernels. In other words, minimize the amount of work needed by
system administrators and users. Our solution is to deliver mail into
the users' home directories, which are exported via NFS[20, 25] to all
of the machines on our network. We wrote a small user-level NFS server
implementing a single symbolic link that references the home directory
of a user, either the one who accessed it, or by name, with a fallback
reference in case of failures. This enables electronic mail to be
delivered directly into the user's home directory, which is already
accessible from any machine on the network. Although we have used our
server primarily for mail delivery redirection, it can be used to
redirect spooled faxes, access to /tmp, etc.
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