How does root read its mail in Ubuntu?

[Derek Broughton]

Sandy Harris wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 8:56 PM, Tommy Trussell
> <tommy.trussell at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 10:05 AM, Paul Johnson <pauljohn32 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>> Various daemon processes send messages to root at localhost.  How can I
>>> read that mail?
>>>
>>> In a RedHat system, I'd su - to root, and run pine.
>>>
>>> In the Ubuntu framework, what is recommended?
>>
>> I believe in the default setup, all email that would ordinarily go to
>> root gets forwarded to the first user created in the system. You can
>> change the behavior by reconfiguring postfix.
>>
> What if I do not want to run postfix?

You have to run _something_.  Strictly speaking, the components of
ubuntu-desktop are not supposed to _ever_ send mail, so you aren't required
to have a mail-delivery-agent, but if you start installing server daemons,
they should depend (usually) on "postfix | mail-transport-agent".
-- 
derek