In Unix, if biff told me I have new mail that didn't appear in the spool, what happened to the message?
In Unix, if biff informed you that you have
new mail that didn't appear in the mail spool, begin by checking your
mail. Perhaps the message was appended to the
end of another message. If a mail message comes in that is not in
proper format (e.g., the first line has no recipient, or it does not
begin with "From" followed by six space-delimited fields), it will not
show up as a separate mail message but will be considered a part of
the previous message. This is a problem on the system that is sending
the mail, and must be corrected by that system's administrator. You
should notify the postmaster at the remote site.
As a side note, many applications attempt to inform you when you have
mail (e.g., trn, tcsh). However, these applications
do not constantly check your mail status and may, on occasion, report that
you have new mail when you have actually already read it.
At Indiana University, for personal or departmental Linux or Unix systems support, see At IU, how do I get support for Linux or Unix?
Last modified on December 02, 2009.
