Network-wide Mail Spool?

[wolf paul]

I would like some comments/advice on the feasibility of having a
central mail spool directory for all users on a UNIX LAN, which
would be cross-mounted to all machines.

I have users who log in on different machines at different times,
but expect to be notified by their shell or biff when new mail for
them arrives, regardless of where they are logged in.

Short of aliasing each user to a list of all machines, which would
produce multiple copies of his/her mail, the above seems to be the
only solution.

However, I would like to know if I should expect problems with
processes on different machines accessing the file at the same time.
Are the lock file mechanisms based on process ids (in which case they
are not guaranteed to be unique if different machines access the file,
nor will a "kill -0" produce the right result)?

The network has two VAXen running Ultrix 3.0, several VAXstations
also running Ultrix 3.0, several SUN SparcStations, and a couple
of 386 machines with System V. We use the standard mailers which
come with each OS, as well as elm and mh. We are currently using
sendmail, but are thinking about switching to smail3.
-- 
Wolf N. Paul, UNIX SysAdmin, IIASA, A - 2361 Laxenburg, Austria, Europe
PHONE: +43-2236-71521-465     FAX: +43-2236-71313      UUCP: uunet!iiasa!wnp
INTERNET: wnp%iiasa at relay.eu.net      BITNET: tuvie!iiasa!wnp at awiuni01.BITNET