Fwd: Postfix, Mutt And No Root Mail?

[Derek Broughton]

Hal Burgiss wrote:

> On Sun, Oct 28, 2007 at 09:02:57PM -0700, Leonard Chatagnier wrote:
>> 
>> Well Ed, I sent root at ubuntu an email via mutt. It went
>> just like every other time I used mutt to send mail,
>> no errors, but mutt didn't show it in the listing even
>> after closing and reopening mutt.  I don't claim to
>> know much about mutt usage and may have done it wrong.
>> BTW, sudo mail shows no mail for root and $mail shows
>> no mail for user but I have user mail in mutt from
>> fetachyahoo and I'm just as confused as ever.
> 
> Each application has a different idea of where to look for a default
> mailbox. mail if probably looking in standard unix places like
> /var/mail/$user (where system mail accounts typically have their
> incoming mail spools before they get popped or routed elsewhere), and
> mutt probably has created $HOME/mail/.
> 

Very good point.  I user Maildirs, and dovecot IMAP for viewing them. 
Dovecot, by default, expects mail to be in $HOME/Maildir, and the MTA puts
it in /var/mail/$USER.  I could configure either one to use the other
location (and I can never decide whether I prefer having all mail in /var,
or in the user's home) but it's easier to just symlink $HOME/Maildir
to /var/mail/$USER.
-- 
derek