OT: Use Thunderbird to pick up ROOT Mail?

[Jacques B.]

On 9/21/07, Jacques B. <jjrboucher at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/20/07, Mike McCarty <Mike.McCarty at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> > I'd like to configure Thunderbird (and/or /root/.forward) so
> > that e-mail to root shows up in my INBOX, and a filter automatically
> > puts it into a Thunderbird folder (root). So far, I have not been
> > successful in this. I have Thunderbird pulling using POP from my
> > ISP. Anyone have advice?
> >
> > Mike
>
> I was able to get my local mail (for current user) with Evolution (not
> sure if Thunderbird allows that as well).  You can configure it to to
> bring in Standard Unix mbox or spool directory. However it can't bring
> root in as an unpriviledged user.  Your solutions are either to setup
> a root cron job that runs a script that copies the root mail file to a
> new name where a local user has priviledge to read it (I copied it
> over and then did a send/receive and got all of root's mail).  Or you
> could create a new group and add your unpriviledged user to it and
> then change ownership/priviledge on the root mail file to allow that
> group to be able to read it.  There is a potential security risk there
> obviously granted if all you give is read access then the worse that
> would happen is someone who compromises your user account would have
> read access to root's mail.
>
> Jacques B.
>

Interesting follow-up. When I delete a message from within the mail
command line command, it gets deleted from within Evolution. So
Evolution is not bringing the messages into it, just reading the local
mailbox on the fly so to speak.

Jacques B.