Re: [gentoo-user] The Local Directory path "/var/spool/mail" is invalid.

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

On Thu, Dec 10, 2020 at 3:29 PM <thelma@sys-concept.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/10/2020 11:58 AM, J. Roeleveld wrote:
> > Are you in the "mail" group?
> >
>
> That was it. Now I can access the /var/spool/mail from TBird
> I'm running Posfix and in main.cf I left as default:
> home_mailbox = .maildir/
>
> So all the local mail (from emerge would go to this folder), I tired as
> root send myself and email: "mailto root" the mail went to my home
> folder .maildir
> but TBird can not read it.  It complains:
>
> "Unable to locate mail spool file"
>

So, two things:

1.  Normal users should NOT be in the mail group.  This can read/write
mail to all users and should be used by your mail delivery daemon.
2.  If you're using maildir for email, why are you configuring
Thunderbird for mbox?

Background: there are two conventions for delivering mail on unix-like
systems.  mbox uses one file per user in /var/spool/mail/$username.
maildir uses one file per message in a directory in ~user/.maildir/new
(for new messages).

Generally you need to pick which format you're using in the MUA (the
thing you use to read your mail) and then the path is set
automatically 99% of the time.

-- 
Rich