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'\" t
.\" -*-nroff-*-
.\"
.\"
.\" Copyright (C) 2000 Thomas Roessler <roessler@does-not-exist.org>
.\"
.\" This document is in the public domain and may be distributed and
.\" changed arbitrarily.
.\"
.TH mbox 5 "August 2000" Unix "User Manuals"
.SH NAME
.PP
mbox \- Format for mail message storage.
.SH DESCRIPTION
.PP
This document describes the format traditionally used by Unix hosts
to store mail messages locally.
.B mbox
files typically reside in the system's mail spool, under various
names in users'
.B Mail
directories, and under the name
.B mbox
in users' home directories.
.PP
An
.B mbox
is a text file containing an arbitrary number of e-mail messages.
Each message consists of a postmark, followed by an e-mail message
formatted according to RFC 822. The file format is line-oriented.
Lines are separated by line feed characters (ASCII 10).
.PP
A postmark line consists of the four characters "From", followed by
a space character, followed by the message's envelope sender
address, followed by whitespace, and followed by a time stamp. The
sender address is expected to be an
.B addrspec
as defined in appendix D of RFC 822.
.PP
The date is expected to be formatted according to the following
syntax (represented in the augmented Backus-Naur formalism used by
RFC 822):
.PP
.TS
lll.
mbox-date = weekday month day time [ timezone ] year
weekday = "Mon" / "Tue" / "Wed" / "Thu" / "Fri"
/ "Sat" / "Sun"
month = "Jan" / "Feb" / "Mar" / "Apr" / "May"
/ "Jun" / "Jul" / "Aug" / "Sep"
/ "Oct" / "Nov" / "Dec"
day = 1*2DIGIT
time = 1*2DIGIT ":" 1*2DIGIT [ ":" 1*2DIGIT ]
timezone = ( "+" / "-" ) 4DIGIT
year = ( 4DIGIT / 2DIGIT )
.TE
.PP
For compatibility reasons with legacy software, two-digit years
greater than or equal to 70 should be interpreted as the years
1970+, while two-digit years less than 70 should be interpreted as
the years 2000-2069.
.PP
Software reading files in this format should also be prepared to
accept non-numeric timezone information such as "CET DST" for
Central European Time, dailight saving time.
.PP
Example:
.IP "" 1
From roessler@does-not-exist.org Fri Jun 23 02:56:55 2000
.PP
In order to avoid mis-interpretation of lines in message bodies
which begin with the four characters "From", followed by a space
character, the character ">" is commonly prepended in front of such
lines.
.SH
LOCKING
.PP
Since
.B mbox
files are frequently accessed by multiple programs in parallel,
.B mbox
files should generally not be accessed without locking.
.PP
Three different locking mechanisms (and combinations thereof) are in
general use:
.IP "\(bu"
.BR fcntl (2)
locking is mostly used on recent, POSIX-compliant systems. Use of
this locking method is, in particular, advisable if
.B mbox
files are accessed through the Network File System (NFS), since it
seems the only way to reliably invalidate NFS clients' caches.
.IP "\(bu"
.BR flock (2)
locking is mostly used on BSD-based systems.
.IP "\(bu"
Dotlocking is used on all kinds of systems. In order to lock an
.B mbox
file named
.IR folder ,
an application first creates a temporary file with a unique
name in the directory in which the
.I folder
resides. The application then tries to use the
.BR link (2)
system call to create a hard link named
.IB folder .lock
to the temporary file. The success of the
.BR link (2)
system call should be additionally verified using
.BR stat (2)
calls. If the link has succeeded, the mail folder is considered
dotlocked. The temporary file can then safely be unlinked.
.IP ""
In order to release the lock, an application just unlinks the
.IB folder .lock
file.
.PP
If multiple methods are combined, implementors should make sure to
use the non-blocking variants of the
.BR fcntl (2)
and
.BR flock (2)
sytem calls in order to avoid deadlocks.
.PP
If multiple methods are combined, an
.B mbox
file must not be considered to have been successfully locked before
all individual locks were obtained. When one of the individual
locking methods fails, an application should release all locks it
acquired successfully, and restart the entire locking procedure from
the beginning, after a suitable delay.
.PP
The locking mechanism used on a particular system is a matter of
local policy, and should be consistently used by all applications
installed on the system which access
.B mbox
files. Failure to do so may result in loss of e-mail data, and in
corrupted
.B mbox
files.
.SH
FILES
.IP "/var/spool/mail/\fIuser\fP"
.IR user 's
incoming mail folder.
.IP "~\fIuser\fP/mbox"
.IR user 's
archived mail messages, in his home directory.
.IP "~\fIuser\fP/Mail/"
A directory in
.IR user 's
home directory which is commonly used to hold
.B mbox
format folders.
.SH
SEE ALSO
.PP
.BR elm (1),
.BR fcntl (2),
.BR flock (2),
.BR link (2),
.BR local (8),
.BR mail (1),
.BR maildir (5),
.BR mail.local (8),
.BR mutt (1),
.BR mutt_dotlock (1),
.BR pine (1),
.BR procmail (1),
.BR sendmail (8)
.PP
D. Crocker, Standard for the format of ARPA Internet text messages,
RFC 822
.PP
M. R. Horton, UUCP mail interchange format standard, RFC 976
.SH
AUTHOR
.PP
The present document was written by Thomas Roessler
<roessler@does-not-exist.org>.
.SH
HISTORY
.PP
The
.B mbox
format occured in Version 6 AT&T Unix.
.PP
A variant of this format was documented in RFC 976.
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