[Mageia-discuss] Problems with Local Mail

[Anne Wilson]

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On 25/06/12 13:21, Doug Laidlaw wrote:
> On Mon, 25 Jun 2012 13:06:45 +0100 James Kerr
> <jim at jkerr82508.free-online.co.uk> wrote:
> 
>> On 25/06/2012 12:54, James Kerr wrote:
>>> On 25/06/2012 11:36, Anne Wilson wrote:
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>>>> 
>>>> Plain M2 :-)  Every time I started Thunderbird I got a
>>>> message that it couldn't locate the local mail spool (can't
>>>> remember the exact words). Assuming it meant
>>>> /var/spool/mail/anne, I touched that, owned anne:mail (I
>>>> tried root, too), but now the message is "Unable to truncate
>>>> spool file /var/spool/mail/anne".
>>>> 
>>>> I don't have the problem on the Cauldron netbook, so I
>>>> checked there, and there is no /var/spool/mail/anne - so I
>>>> guess something has changed wrt local mail.  Are we now
>>>> talking about ~/.local/share/local-mail/ ?  What do I need to
>>>> do now?
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> I don't have this problem. I use postfix to deliver system
>>> mails to /var/spool/mail/jim. (I don't use it for any other
>>> purpose.) Thunderbird collects those and stores them in 
>>> ~/.thunderbird/xxx.default/Mail/localhost/inbox (where xxx is
>>> an alphanumeric string). /var/spool/mail/jim is owned by jim.
>>> 
>>> The process is the same on both my Mageia2 and cauldron 
>>> installations.
>>> 
>>> That error message suggests to me that there is something about
>>> the file in /var/spool/mail/anne that is not what thunderbird
>>> expects, but I've no idea what that might be. The only thought
>>> I have is that for some reason that file is read only instead
>>> of read/write.
>>> 
>>> Jim
>>> 
>> 
>> Sorry - one point that I forgot to mention. /var/spool/mail/anne
>> is only created when the first message is delivered and so
>> thunderbird reports that it cannot find it until mails start
>> being delivered to it.
>> 
>> 
> But you use Postfix.  I use getmail.  Both deliver mail to
> /var/spool/mail/user.  If Anne is downloading her mail directly
> via POP, /var/spool/mail/anne will never be used.

I have a dovecot IMAP server.  Procmail sorts the mail into
directories on my server.  The only use I would expect in
/var/spool/mail is if the system needs to send a message - and that
normally would be to root.  Of course root is aliased to one of my
mail accounts.

> Kmail is like that.  In both cases, the mail is placed in the
> appropriate place in $HOME. I am running getmail as user, so I had
> to create /var/spool/mail/doug manually.  It is an mbox file, so
> can be created with "touch."  Postfix runs as root, and can create
> the spool if necessary.
> 
I did touch it - but I think it's really not relevant.

> It did occur to me that the config screens may say what the
> directories are, but it looks as though $HOME/.thunderbird is the
> place to look.
> 

Thanks anyway

Anne
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