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Date:      Thu, 24 Sep 1998 13:21:04 -0700 (PDT)
From:      David Wolfskill <dhw@whistle.com>
To:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG, jbarker1842@my-dejanews.com, scott@dcs.qmw.ac.uk
Subject:   Re: sendmail losing mail
Message-ID:  <199809242021.NAA01615@pau-amma.whistle.com>
In-Reply-To: <POPLBHENMJPPBAAA@my-dejanews.com>

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>Date: Thu, 24 Sep 1998 11:27:41 -0700
>From: "Jim Barker" <jbarker1842@my-dejanews.com>

>>Well, unless you've done something weird, mail is locally delivered into
>>/var/mail/$USER.  Did you try running 'mail'?

>I did not see any subdirectories under /var/mail, such as jimbark.
>I did try to run mail, but it said I had no mail.
>More appropiately "jimbark has no mail".

Assuming you're using the usual UNIX "local mail delivery agent" (as
your configuration (which I elided) showed, and which is
/usr/libexec/mail.local in FreeBSD-2.2), the objects in /var/mail are
simple files (rather than directories), in "UNIX mailbox" format.

In this format, a given mailbox is a file that consists of messages
concatenated together; the beginning of a new message is indicated by
the existence of a line matching the pattern /^From /.

The usual mail "client programs" (or "MUAs"), as well as the usual POP
servers, can generally read this format without jumping through hoops.

david
-- 
David Wolfskill		UNIX System Administrator
dhw@whistle.com		voice: (650) 577-7158	pager: (650) 371-4621

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