Please help as soon as possible

[Ed Wilts]

On Wed, Jun 23, 2004 at 09:35:16PM +0530, Nitin wrote:
> I'm talking about server side of my sendmail. I used mail utility of Linux
> to check the mail and it now doesn't show the messages printed once. There's
> an option 'unread' but it can only be used, while you are still in the
> session......
> 
> Using Sendmail 8.9.3 on Redhat Linux 7.2.

sendmail is a mail transfer agent - MTA for short.  It only receives and
sends e-mail and has no user components.  You do not interact with
sendmail when you're reading your e-mail - sendmail has already passed
it off to a mail delivery agent (MDA) which has stored the message
somewhere.  You then run a mail user agent (MUA) like evolution, mutt,
pine, etc.  It's the MUA that decides to delete or keep your read e-mail
or mark it read/unread.

What application are you starting up to read your e-mail?  Are you reading
via local files, pop, or imap?

> There's absolutely no messagebox file like there should be in
> /var/spool/mail. So what happened to those messages? are they deleted as
> soon as read ?

There are a lot of variables - if you read via pop with a delete after
read setting, then yes, they may have been deleted.  

-- 
Ed Wilts, RHCE
Mounds View, MN, USA
mailto:ewilts at ewilts.org
Member #1, Red Hat Community Ambassador Program