Root mail account is dying

[A. Rick Anderson]

Whenever I attempt to access mail from root, it pauses, then dies with 
the following error message.

Mail version 8.1 6/6/93.  Type ? for help.
"/var/spool/mail/root": 47 messages 47 new
 >N  1 root at Anar.galarik.or  Wed May 18 08:13  29/1103  "SMART error 
(OfflineUncorrectableSector) detected on host: Anar"
  N  2 root at Anar.galarik.or  Wed May 18 08:13  29/1106  "SMART error 
(CurrentPendingSector) detected on host: Anar"
  N  3 root at Anar.galarik.or  Thu May 19 02:03  26/989   "Cron 
<root at Anar> /usr/bin/yum -y upgrade"
...
fseek: Invalid argument
panic: temporary file seek
Aborted
You have mail in /var/spool/mail/root

I am not worried about the particular messages being shown; I understand 
what is going on there (I get SMART messages whenever I reboot the 
machine).  My concern is that I can't get into root's mail.

-- 
A. Rick Anderson