On Mon 13 Mar 2017 at 03:05:31 (+0000), Andy Smith wrote: > Hi Sharon, > > On Sun, Mar 12, 2017 at 10:55:05AM +0000, Sharon Kimble wrote: > > In an effort to get gnus to read root emails I've chowned > > /var/mail/mail, added myself to the 'mail' group, changed the > > permissions of /var/mail/mail, and generally frigged around with it. > > That is not a good way to go about achieving this. > > A better way to achieve the goal of being able to read emails to > root would be to edit /etc/aliases so that it contains something > like: > > root: sharon > > where "sharon" is your local user name. > > That would cause email for root to be redirected to your username > where you could read it with your usual mail reading software. If > you don't read email locally then you could probably instead send it > to the email address you have used here: > > root: boudic...@skimble.plus.com > > > So how do I restart root sending logwatch etc again please? > > I would start by putting the correct ownership and permissions back > on /var/mail/mail. It is normally owned by mail:mail with mode 0600.
It might make it clearer to write: /var/mail/foo is owned by foo:mail with mode 0600, /var/mail/bar is owned by bar:mail with mode 0600, etc. I would just add that I don't think I've ever had mail sent to user "mail" by anything, and so I've never observed a file called /var/mail/mail. That may be totally unimportant; obviously if mail _does_ arrive for user "mail", such a file will get created. > If that doesn't help, try looking at the logs of your mail server > when you expect the emails to be sent. If using exim, that would be > /var/log/exim4/mainlog and /var/log/exim4/paniclog. I would also take yourself out of the "mail" group. Cheers, David.
