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.
Another possibility is that if you are using the Elm filter
utility (a program that comes with the standard Elm distribution), it
may have been confused by an address and deleted the message. In this
case, having biff on will let you know when a problematic
message arrives. This problem is difficult to identify and diagnose, as
it does not occur consistently on all systems and with all versions of
the Elm filter. Due to this possibility of mail being lost during the
filtering process, UITS does not recommend using the Elm
filter program.
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.
Note: Elm is not available on any UITS systems.
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 August 22, 2008.
