<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 TRANSITIONAL//EN"> <HTML> <HEAD> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; CHARSET=UTF-8"> <META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="GtkHTML/3.2.3"> </HEAD> <BODY> <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE> <PRE> 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/ </PRE> </BLOCKQUOTE> Thanks Daniel, I don't stop learning on this list, that's great... I had 7 messages waiting to be read ! You were right it seems they originate from some program, mostly 'Debconf' and also Cron. But the 'mail' command is very awkward to use, so I just opened the /etc/var/mail in nano to read the mails, it's just one big text file with all the mails glued together. Vince </BODY> </HTML>