[ale] (easy?) Apache Question and ELM Question

[Jeff Dilcher]

I have recently set up a Redhat 6.0 system, and have 
the included Apache running, pretty much with the default
configuration.  I have several users on my system, who
are setting up web sites in their home directories
public_html.  Currently this URL will load their home
directory:

http://mycomputer.com/~user/

however, if this is used:

http://mycomputer.com/~user the server returns a page
not found error.  Apparantly Apache is demanding that
a trailing "/" be after directory names, or it won't 
load the index.html file in that directory.

Anyone know how I can fix this to where the trailing
slash is not needed?

---------------------------

On a somewhat unrelated problem, users on my systerm
are using "elm" as their message reader.  When a user
does this, a file called:

/tmp/.mailbox.Mailbox 

is created, which keeps any other user on the systerm from
using their ELM mail reader.  I think this is related to
an environment variable.  My question:

how can I, as administrator, make it to where each user
has their own lock file, instead of every user creating
the same /tmp.mailbox.Mailbox file?

Thanks all!
This forum has been very helpful to me!