# mail in terminal?



## Koelling (May 27, 2002)

I opened terminal today and found this:


> Welcome to your worst nightmare!
> You have new mail.
> [localhost:~] koelling%


 Just to clear things up, the worst nightmare part is my edited welcome line. I use Terminal so much that it is quite possible that I didn't see this simply because I open then start working, I don't read that part. What does it mean and how do I fix it?


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## Paragon (May 27, 2002)

I'm not sure what your problem is...but if you want to see your new mail just type mail and you can see what your "new mail" is all about. 
Most probably it's just your computer log (cleanup log, send/recv. log) being directed to you instead of being directed to "the black hole". I have it setup in this way. You could also have the mail being directed to your mail.app.


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## howardm4 (May 27, 2002)

Suprisingly enough, it means you have new mail. 

This happens if a cron task or something else local happens
and the system sends mail.  It ain't gonna send it POP/IMAP.

The shell checks for that on startup.  Check 
/var/mail


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## lethe (May 27, 2002)

paragon:  how would i go about getting these mails directed to my mail.app?


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## chenly (May 27, 2002)

I've tried to use mail, but but get an error about "group writable directory"; I've checked the recipients and, no, they haven't gotten the messages. Is this something Apple deliberately disabled or is it something another program messed up?


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## Paragon (May 27, 2002)

> _Originally posted by lethe _
> *paragon:  how would i go about getting these mails directed to my mail.app? *



Here's a link on how to setup your mail.app to receive these messages.

http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2002/01/22/terminal_pt2.html


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## lethe (May 27, 2002)

paragon:  thanks, that was an informative article, although a bit newbish.

chenly: i believe the group permissions thing is answered in the article that paragon posted.


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## Paragon (May 27, 2002)

np...I know it was a little "newbish" as you say but hey it does the job.


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## Koelling (May 27, 2002)

Ah ha! It all makes sense now. 

I've been trying to get mpg123 to be my cron alarm clock but for some reason it wasn't able to find mpg123 as a command. Cron was then sending me the error messages via mail. I did fix the problem of it not finding it (path of /sw/bin/mpg123) but it's still not able to create a sound connection so I'm still stuck with iTunes.


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## Giaguara (Mar 29, 2003)

If I see in terminal I have new mail I simply type mutt.

How many of us here use terminal for seeing the mails? I casually use it mainly for sending mails ... and I know only one here who really uses mutt as main mail application


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## Darkshadow (Mar 29, 2003)

Hmm, I'll occasionally use the term to send mail, but I set up  a POP server to read my mail with Mail.


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## hazmat (Mar 30, 2003)

> _Originally posted by Giaguara _
> *
> How many of us here use terminal for seeing the mails? I casually use it mainly for sending mails ... and I know only one here who really uses mutt as main mail application  *



Yup.  Mutt rules.


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