Curiosity re: /var/spool/mail by beginner??

[Les Mikesell]

On Sun, 2006-06-11 at 17:33, William Case wrote:

> This is just a curiosity question?  I have been using Linux (FC) for
> over two years now, and I have never found a use for /var/spool/mail.
> Whenever I login as root I get messages telling me that I have mail. I
> just clean it out every 5 or 6 months.  I read through it first using
> the mail utility but there never seems to be any information that is
> useful to me.
> 
> I understand that on the original Unix systems 'mail' was how the system
> and the kernel would communicate with the user and root, but does it
> have any use now?
> 
> Do people on the list use it anymore?  If so, for what?  How?  Or, am I
> missing something basic?

There is nothing special regarding the kernel or the root user
involved.  Unix and unix-like systems provide a general
purpose mail facility for all users.  The '/bin/mail'
program is generally obsolete now since programs with
more features are also included, but it still works and
the others share the ability to use the same transport
programs and mailboxes.  The reason you only see mail
to root is that nothing else is being sent.  There are
some status and error reporting programs included in
linux distributions that periodically send messages to
the root user.  If your system had more users, they could
send mail to each other and other internet users with the
same mechanism (and a small configuration change to accept
mail from the network).

-- 
  Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com