After first installed postfix (1.1.11-r1) and then mailx (8.1.1.11) I have this: qpkg -f /bin/mail net-mail/mailx * qpkg -f /usr/bin/mail net-mail/postfix * An obvious collision. Is it safe to remove /usr/bin/mail? (it's a symlink to /usr/sbin/sendmail)
Actually, it's _not_ a collision, since /usr/bin/mail and /bin/mail are certainly different paths. /usr/bin/mail should point to /usr/sbin/sendmail; the lore is that removing that symlink might break things.
From an e-mail by Christian Axelsson: Well, both /bin/mail and /usr/bin/mail are in the users path, that's a collision. If I run 'mail', the program that gets executed will be the last one found in my $PATH Please dont tell me that this is the way it is supposed to be? On all other distributions I've seen, sendmail never have a 'mail' symlink pointing at it (but sendmail itself can be a symlink). From applications, sendmail should be referd to as /usr/bin/sendmail or /usr/sbin/sendmail. Hmmm. I had thought that postfix installed the /usr/bin/mail --> /usr/sbin/sendmail symlink, but it seems that we do. I've no idea why. Azarah?
nosferatu init.d # echo $PATH /usr/bin/ccache:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/opt/blackdown-jdk-1.3.1/bin:/opt/blackdown-jdk-1.3.1/jre/bin:/usr/qt/3/bin:/usr/qt/2/bin nosferatu init.d # which mail /bin/mail nosferatu init.d # The one first in $PATH should be executed. I think the /usr/bin/mail symlink have its roots from the time when there was not /bin/mail. If I remember correctly, mailx was my first ebuild when I started to use Gentoo ;-) Anyhow, if no other disto have this, I think it should be safe to remove. I just do not have access to boxes with other distro on them, so a bit difficult for me to verify.
Fixed on CVS by yanking the symlink.
