Score:0

New local users cannot authenticate to get mail - locally or remotely

vn flag

I've recently created several local users, all of whom get their mailboxes created in /var/mail/<user>, but when trying to run mail as the user in an ssh session, I receive "no mail for " ...even though I just sent mail to that user from root and it's sitting in /var/mail/<user> (it will show mail if I do mail -f /var/mail/<user> - but I shouldn't have to do that).

If I try to configure external mail apps (have tried Apple Mail on iPhone and macOS, and Thunderbird on macOS), I cannot get authenticated.

For users made several months ago, I can both get mail on the commandline with mail or set them up in external mail apps no problem.

What about recent users should I look at to diagnose this issue?

hr flag
Is the users' `MAIL` variable getting exported (ex. `printenv MAIL` or `declare -p MAIL`)?
warren avatar
vn flag
@steeldriver - for `root`, I get `/root/Maildir`. For my new user (one is `gitlab`, as I'm setting-up to send/receive updates via email as well), `/home/gitlab/Maildir`. That's with `printenv`. Via `declare`: `declare -x MAIL="/home/gitlab/Maildir"`
hr flag
OK so that's clearly different from `/var/mail/<user>` (which is the default set via pam_mail.so iirc)
warren avatar
vn flag
@steeldriver - there's nothing in `~/Maildir` for `root` (or any other user) ... but there is in `/var/mail/root` :)
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