smail question

[Marlon Urias]

Recently we had the problem that the smail server did not properly
mount /var/spool/mail/ from the spool server. This caused all incoming
mail to either be lost or put into the errors directory. My question is:
How did smail know not to use the local /var/spol/mail and what did
smail do with the email that came in during the trouble zone?
We can't find it?!                      help?   -marlon