[Evolution-users] Local delivery account

[Luigi Cantoni]

On Fri, 2025-10-24 at 11:14 -0400, janos via evolution-users wrote:
> On Fri, 2025-10-24 at 01:15 +0100, Pete Biggs wrote:
> > 
> > If you wish the account and mail to be in a separate hierarchy on
> > the
> > sidebar, then you need an account of type "Standard Unix mbox spool
> > file".
> > 
> Very interesting. I do have a postfix mail server on my machine, and
> have /var/spool/mail/ and /var/spool/postfix/ directories on the
> machine. Everything works fine.
> 
> The /var/spool/mail/janos file is (partially listed):
> Quote
> From MAILER_DAEMON Wed Jul 13 17:52:11 2022
> Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2022 17:52:11 -0400
> From: Mail System Internal Data <MAILER-DAEMON at andraslinux>
> Subject: DON'T DELETE THIS MESSAGE -- FOLDER INTERNAL DATA
> ...
> This text is part of the internal format of your mail folder, and is
> not
> a real message. It is created automatically by the mail system
> software.
> ...
> Unquote
> 
> OK. So just for fun in my Evo I created an account of type "Standard
> Unix mbox spool file". However, Evo could not read it and reported an
> error:
> Quote
> Error while Storing changes in folder “janosUNIX : INBOX”.
> 
> Could not lock “/var/spool/mail/janos”
> Unquote
> 
> OK, no problem, just my curiosity of the internal workings of mail
> system. My understanding is that originally the mail system in UNUX
> was developed with the purpose of sending messages from one user to
> another in the same UNIX machine. Later on it was adopted to
> networked UNIX machines using smtp protocol. Finally, with Internet
> and IP the domain thing completed the present email system.
> 
> My system is Gentoo Linux. It looks like the /var/spool/mail/
> directory is part of the standard distribution without any user files
> unless there is something like postfix or nullmailer installed.
> 
> Any comments?
> 
> Just curious - Janos
> -- 
> sent from andraslinux machine
> https://jgklinux.jangkom.com/
> 
> 
Hi Janos and others, 
If I am wrong in any of this then please correct me and no offence
taken at all.

As generally commented “/var/spool/mail/USER” are general mailboxs that
receive mail in and hold it there. 
My mail server delivers all mail to such a box for each user and the
evolution picks it up from there and puts it into the evolution
structure. 
The particular email that is already in that box is a place holder and
mail systems can use to say things like where it is up to in that box
to save searching each item. 
I have it set so that all mail is deleted from the mbox file when it is
read into evolution. So for me it can be deleted and will be
regenerated again next time the mbox is looked at. 
So delete it if you wish and don't worry when it appears to come back.
If it is NOT the first email it will be read by evolution as just
another email and will appear in your emails. Definitely delete it from
evolution it servers no purpose at all there.

You can make evolution look at that mail box by picking the "Local
Server" type entry and pointing at “/var/spool/mail/USER” USER=your
users name.
Evolution should then read these emails. You can test that by just
trying mail -s"This is a check" USER and it should deliver it to that
mbox and you should then be able to read it into evolution.
I use that account for all my cron tasks and things like that send its
mail outputs there for me to read them and make sure all is running
file.
My aliases file delivers all user mail to such a box for each user also
so I use it all the time.
Maybe you do have incorrect permissions so here are mine. Also I am
using s-nail as the mail program with postfix as the server etc

drwxr-xr-x. 1 root root 214 Aug 8 10:17 /var
drwxr-xr-x. 1 root root 174 Jul 30 08:00 /var/spool
drwxrwxr-x. 1 root mail 6 Oct 25 07:11 /var/spool/mail
-rw-rw----. 1 lui mail 0 Oct 25 07:18 /var/spool/mail/lui

By the way you will likely have a file for root also. I as part of cron
get that mail and give it me (my user) and remove it from root
otherwise it will just keep on growing.

Note most people on the list appear to have mail on external servers
and just read the mail into evolution. I do NOT work that way.
I have all mail delivered to my computer (and work server for all
people there too) and then read it into evolution. Evolution is the
complete mail system, nothing outside my computer (work server also).
As an extra item I backup all mail coming in and hold that for a month
or two before deleting it.
I also use evolution's backup to create weekly backups which I archive
away. They go back maybe a decade or so.
Once a year or so I create mbox backups of folders that are just old
subjects that are not required and that reduces the evolution size
down.

-- 
Thanks
Luigi
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