I'm just piping in here to say that the issue is based on how the login(1) program is called during the authorization process. This is beyond the scope of gui terminals and is even once more removed from the shell.
I've outlined a more in depth answer here: https://askubuntu.com/a/1278257/879293 Also, I've provided a bash function that you can add to your .profile (assuming you use 'login shell' for your terminals) that will give you something like the behavior that you (and me as well) were seeking relative to this thread. Best regards. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop Packages, which is subscribed to gnome-terminal in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1872053 Title: Local mail is never checked Status in gnome-terminal package in Ubuntu: New Bug description: Description: Ubuntu 19.10 Release: 19.10 gnome-terminal: Installed: 3.34.2-1ubuntu1 Candidate: 3.34.2-1ubuntu1 Context : In a typical daily use scenario, a Ubuntu user is not expected to use a console login with "Ctrl-Alt Fx". Instead it is expected to use gnome-terminal for command-line interaction. That being said : What I expect to happen when I launch gnome-terminal : I expect the bash shell started by gnome-terminal to check local mail (in /var/mail/$USER ) and reports accordingly "You have new mail" if there is new mail. What happens instead : gnome-terminal invokes bash with $MAIL variable not set. So mail is not checked, and the user is never informed about new local mail. Workaround : Put export MAIL=/var/mail/$USER in ~/.bashrc To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-terminal/+bug/1872053/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages Post to : desktop-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
