'updatedb' : is it really mandatory, can I switch it off and how ?!

[Daniel Robitaille]

>  Also, I remember once, I switched to tty1 console, logged as root, and
> postfix told me I had new mail ! How can that be, I didn't even know of his
> existence, so no way it knows my e-mail address and log-in info etc !?
> Weird.  Or is it just 'local' mail ?

it's local mail; by default there are no open port on an Ubuntu
machines toward the outside world; so no external e-mails can reach
your computer unless you explicitly open postfix to the outside world.

If a local job on a machine has an error or something, sometimes it
will generate an e-mail and send it to the account "root".  I believe
in Ubuntu this will by default get forwarded to the first user of the
system, probably you here.

>From an xterm, type "mail" to see these local e-mails.  Or simply
check the files in the directory /var/mail/