Where are my emails stored on CentOS 5.6

Question

I have a CentOS 5.6 VM installation and currently have a handful of emails that I would like to get access to.

When I run mail as root, I get:

[root@dev mail]# mail
Mail version 8.1 6/6/93.  Type ? for help.
"/var/spool/mail/root": 11 messages 11 unread
>U  1 [email protected]  Mon Feb 17 10:06  44/1625  "Logwatch for dev.localdomain (Linux)"

Where is that file stored? I would like to send it on to someone for review.

I can't see it in /var/spool/mail/.

Solution

The /var/spool/mail/ is the folder that mail is saved as a file as /var/spool/mail/$USER.

• when you call mail it will by default read that file.
• all read mails will be stored in mbox file and you can access them using mail -f ~/mbox.

Comments

[John K. N.]

In @crmpicco 's example root's unread and/or unhandled mail is stored in /var/spool/mail/root where root is a file.