You have new mail in...

[alice78]

When I invoke a command on the terminal I am getting this annoying message from time to time:

You have new mail in /var/spool/mail/root

I am new to Fedora (previous Ubuntu user) and no idea where this comes from. How to turn this option off?

PS: I searched the internet.

[aesir]

Well you are supposed to read them, they can contain important logs and errors (even though most of the time they are useless).

When you see it, run the command "mail".
It is simple to use: just type help and it will show the basic commands; you can use syntaxes like d*, d10-27, etc.

If you want to tell bash not to check for new mail change the MAILCHECK variable:
MAILCHECK=0
to make it persistent for you current user:
echo 'MAILCHECK=0' >> $HOME/.bashrc

[alice78]

No thank you. I don't want to read them. If you don't know the answer please don't make the internet a rubbish by posting irrelevant answers.

[aesir]

Please if you are not able to read don't bother others to write you an answer!!!

[glennzo]

Hello alice 78. I wouldn't call aesir's answer irrelevant. Not by a long shot. As a matter of fact, in my opinion, aesir's answer is very informative and accurate. I would, however, call your reply rude and uncalled for. This will not be tolerated going forward.

If you don't know how to handle the mail messages perhaps you need to revisit the advice given.

[smr54]

Sigh. Ok, I can understand frustration and quick answers out of frustration, I'm married, but when something important happens in life, one realizes how trivial aggravation on a forum really is.


(On the other hand, the mail command is a pain, I recommend mutt for that.)
If you don't want to read them....

Well, check if sendmail or postfix is runnning.

pgrep sendmail

If you get an answer, that means yes, it is running. If you just go back to a command prompt it means it isn't, and my answer is equally irrelevant.

Just to be sure, if it goes back to a command prompt, try

pgrep master

If it still goes back to a command prompt, well, you can stop reading. Otherwise, if one or the other of those gives you a line with a number, or perhaps two lines. Most likely is sendmail, so then you can do

systemctl disable sendmail.service

as root or with sudo.

If you got nothing with sendmail but got something with pgrep master, then use postfix.service instead of sendmail.service

(Not sure about that--postfix might just show up as sendmail, but regardless, in that case, you'll get an answer with the first pgrep)

Next time you reboot, it will stop sendmail, and then you shouldn't get those messages, I think, but I'm not guaranteeing..

As for this answer, if you don't like it, as I said, I'm married, so you can be as abusive as you want--that stuff rolls right off, but as I tell my wife when she's throwing things at me, it's not the best way to get help.

[alice78]

Originally Posted by aesir

Well you are supposed to read them, they can contain important logs and errors (even though most of the time they are useless).

When you see it, run the command "mail".
It is simple to use: just type help and it will show the basic commands; you can use syntaxes like d*, d10-27, etc.

If you want to tell bash not to check for new mail change the MAILCHECK variable:
MAILCHECK=0
to make it persistent for you current user:
echo 'MAILCHECK=0' >> $HOME/.bashrc

Thanks for your answer. I didn't see the last part.