sendmail: mail.local delivers to /var/mail/ not /var/spool/mail

[Joseph Mack NA3T]

I'm setting up sendmail-8.12.10 (compile from scratch, linux) and it's
been a while since I've done this. I seem to need to know more about what
I'm doing this time than I did before as I don't remember having a whole
lot of problems last time.

sendmail is trying to deliver the mail to the file user_name in
/var/mail/, while I have a /var/spool/mail directory for this. I can make
a link, but I would rather have the mail arrive where I want. The local
devilery agent is /usr/sbin/mail.local which from the man page, delivers
mail by default to /var/mail/ and presumably this is the cause of the
problem. I've looked through the source code for mail.local and can't find
where the mailbox filename is declared. Possibly it's in a Makefile or m4
file somewhere, and I've grep'ed for "var", "mail" and haven't found a
sign of them anywhere. I've also looked in google and google groups for
help, but everyone seems to be happy with local delivery to /var/mail.

Any fix will do here: Either recoding mail.local or using another delivery
agent (and if so, how do I fix my sendmail.mc).

Thanks Joe

-- 
Joseph Mack NA3T EME(B,D), FM05lw North Carolina
jmack (at) wm7d (dot) net - azimuthal equidistant map
generator at http://www.wm7d.net/azproj.shtml
Homepage http://www.austintek.com/ It's GNU/Linux!