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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!howland.erols.net!psinntp!pubxfer.news.psi.net!usenet From: Luoqi Chen <luoqi@watermarkgroup.com> Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: root's mail??? Date: Tue, 24 Jun 1997 17:00:20 -0400 Organization: The Watermark Group Lines: 29 Message-ID: <33B0355C.46D1@watermarkgroup.com> References: <5ok7j5$dc5@quail.swcp.com> <874taoiwrm.fsf@balrog.ml.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: 38.246.139.33 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01Gold (Macintosh; U; PPC) Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:43432 Ted Buswell wrote: > > crs@quail.swcp.com (Charlie Sorsby) writes: > > > > What must I do to read root's mail? I find that I can't do it with > > sudo and I can't do it when I actually su to root--all I get is my > > own mail. I must have something misconfigured but what? > > > > My guess is that after getting uid=0, you've still got $USER set to > your login name. By default, 'mail' looks at the file /var/mail/$USER > > Try: > > $ su -l root > # mail > > Or: > > $ sudo sh -c "USER=root mail" > > A lot (most?) people find it easier to have mail addressed to root end up > in the mailbox of a "real" account (either by .forward or aliases(5)). > > -Ted There is an easy way, # mail -u root -lq