[Mageia-discuss] Problems with Local Mail

Doug Laidlaw laidlaws at hotkey.net.au
Mon Jun 25 17:54:20 CEST 2012


On Mon, 25 Jun 2012 16:20:00 +0100
Anne Wilson <annew at kde.org> wrote:

> >> Of course, if Anne _is_ using a local mail server, Thunderbird 
> >> must point to /var/spool/mail/anne.  But she can receive mail on 
> >> the notebook, where that file doesn't exist, so I assume she is 
> >> using straight POP or IMAP.
> >>   
> > 
> > If indeed Anne is using POP or IMAP to collect "local" mail then I 
> > don't think she needs to configure a Unix Movemail account in 
> > thunderbird. I believe it is that account that is looking at 
> > /var/spool/mail/anne. Perhaps she has such an account on Mageia 2
> > but not in cauldron, which would explain why she does not see the
> > error messages on cauldron.
> >   
> To be honest I don't recall ever hearing of movemail before this, so I
> don't know where it comes from.
> 
> Anne

Me either.  "Local" mail, the mail that collects in /var/spool/mail, is
often generated by the system.  I have 3 user accounts (one for a user
that no longer exists.)  Postfix was installed because something
else needs it, and has a mailbox as well.  At the moment postfix has 500
KB in it, which will all be system messages that I don't worry about.
The others are all empty.  My doug account was cleaned out when I read
mail with Claws.

If you have a mail server on your computer, that collects mail from the
Web and distributes it to users on your network, it will be placed
initially in /var/spool/mail/xxxx.  I use getmail to put it there then
run it through dspam, to filter out the spam.  Before then, I just
downloaded my mail by POP straight into ~/.kde4/kmail/mail.  You will
be doing much the same.  IMAP seems to use dovecot or similar, but I
know nothing about it.  My ISP supports IMAP, but I don't need it.  It
seems to have value only for people who get their mail at different
locations.

I suppose that if you are like me, you have run through your Thunderbird
config a dozen times.  I am inclined to copy the working config
you have on the notebook, but others tell me it is bad practice.  You
need to tell Thunderbird to collect mail from your ISP, but your
problem seems to have something to do with permissions.  It should be
able to read your "anne" mailbox in the spool and truncate it, because
it should be owned by user anne and group mail, but for a simple POP
account, it should be looking at one of the files in
 /home/anne/.thunderbird/4upsp8fe.default/Mail/Local Folders/  You
 could try running "locate -i Inbox" to find out where your Inbox is.

The other thought is that the 4upsp8fe.default is a user directory as
with Mozilla.  Is there another one alongside it?  Thunderbird may be
looking at the wrong one?

You can redirect system mail, like my 500K in Postfix, to go to your
user account.  I simply trust the system.

Since I haven't used Thunderbird for a long time, I can't offer any
specific help.

Doug.


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