cp limits login.access and others: These files were not installed during the installation of the package so we copy them manually as those files are used to configure authentication details on the system. sed "s|/var/spool/mail|/var/mail|" login.defs.linux > /etc/login.defs: /var/spool/mail is the old location of the user mailboxes. The location that is used nowadays is /var/mail.