Mail Server (progress)

[Derek Broughton]

David McGlone wrote:

> On Thursday 25 October 2007 7:08:47 pm Derek Broughton wrote:
>> David McGlone wrote:
> 
>> > Ok so far, I *think* I have fetchmail working, it seems to be
>> > retrieving my mail, but heck I can't find the mail anywhere. When I
>> > look in /var/mail it says there are messages for dmcglone but when I
>> > try to read them they disappear like Chris Angel :-)
>>
>> What precisely do you have in /var/mail?  Under no circumstances should
>> you be using mbox files - there's simply no good reason to use them these
>> days
>> for anything but an archive.  Set up delivery to Maildir directories. 
>> Then under /var/mail/dmcglone (or whatever) you should see "new", "cur"
>> and "tmp" directories.  In the "new" one, there'll be one file per
>> message - until you look at them in a mail program, when they'll get
>> moved to "cur"
> 
> In /var/mail there is just one empty text file:dmcglone
> 
> How would you suggest creating a maildir mailbox?

What are you using for mail delivery?  In postfix, iirc, you just tell it to
deliver to /var/mail/$USER/, instead of /var/mail/$USER (the slash
indicating a directory, and therefore Maildir).  I never used procmail, but
I think maildrop asked in the debconf settings.

> I use webmin by the way, have you tried it? 

No.

>> > after I checked mail, I looked in mailbox and indeed there was 1
>> > message,
>>
>> How?
> 
> I wish I knew, but when I checked /var/mail it said there was mail for
> dmcglone when I clicked on it the mail disappeared.

Sorry, I know better than to be so terse.  I meant, how did you look in the
mailbox?  I presume you mean you opened it with a mail program, but which
one?  I'm not sure what difference that actually makes, but we can't
diagnose it if we have no idea what program you're using.
-- 
derek