Why would the sticky bit NOT be set on /var/spool/mail ???

[Joe(theWordy)Philbrook]

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I started with kubuntu 5.10, did apt-get install mail. Which also got
me postfix. And a configuration "wizard?" which helped me set up for
local mail... (I use pine to access my ISP provided mail boxes/servers
directly. and "mail" to send local messages...)

I did nothing to change anything about my local inbox folder accept 
mailing myself a couple of test messages... However I've noticed that
when I start pine it puts the following warning on it's status line for
a few seconds. 

[Folder vulnerable - directory /var/spool/mail must have 1777 protection]

I wasn't sure what it was talking about, but on a guess perhaps octal mode
values for chmod... 

a quick look at the man page for chmod indicated that a 1 in the
leftmost position of the 4 octal digits was the "sticky bit" and that on
world writable directories, it was used to prevent others besides the
owner of a file and/or root from doing nasty things like deleting or
renaming the file... Hmmmnnn Better have a look see.

Extracted from "ls -l /var/spool" :

lrwxrwxrwx   1 root   root       7 Dec 12 06:47 mail -> ../mail

Ok so it's a link to /var/mail...

Extracted from "ls -l /var" :

drwxrwsr-x   2 root mail  4096 Jan  5 22:57 mail

Since I'm not so good at interpreting the finer points of the symbolic
representation of permissions I checked via mc and sure enough it didn't
have the sticky bit set... 

Since my linux box is really a PC with no remote access, it probably
didn't matter, but on general principles I set it...

New extract from "ls -l /var" :

drwxrwsr-t   2 root mail  4096 Jan  5 22:57 mail


My question is why wouldn't this sticky bit have been set by default on
kubuntu????

   #############################################################
   ##_if_you'd_prefer_an_clearsigned_".asc"_text_file_of_this_##
   ##message_as_an_mime_encoded_attachment,just_ask_me_while__##
   ##it's_STILL_IN_my_outbox_folder_._._._=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+;-)_##
   #gpg sig for: Joe (theWordy) Philbrook DSA key ID 0x6C2163DE#
   # You can find my public gpg key at http://pgpkeys.mit.edu/ #
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