Upgrade Problems

[kbun at xpresso.seaslug.org]

Howdy folks;

I'm running 12.04, and just lucked into upgrading my old
Pentium 3 to an AMD Sempron(tm) Processor 2800+.

Unfortunatly some of my backup tapes went a little wonky,
and I've been fighting a number of battles getting things
working properly again.

I've gotten it down to two main problems, (fingers crossed),
and need a little info.

1. /var/mail is supposed to be a link to /var/spool/mail.
After all this time I'm still a virgin when it comes
to links, and have no idea of the right command for
creating the link is, what type of link is needed etc.

2. Alpine's .pinerc file uses a set of string variables
for sending info to alternate mailers. They are in
the "%" format. The only one I can remember offhand
is %s for the Subject: line. There's a bunch of
others, but the file I had those in was one of the
ones I lost in the transition.

Any help on the above, much appreciated.

Bill