11

The Terminal keeps telling me I have mail from scripts that are hitting errors, and then when I scroll through the messages to read them, it tells me afterwards saved x messages in mbox.

Where is my mbox, I cannot find it?

Improve this question

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
10

Open Terminal and type mail

For example, I created a test message for the purposes of this answer. Now, when I type the mail command:

mail version 8.1 6/6/93.  Type ? for help.
"/var/mail/allan": 1 message 1 new
>N  1 allan@Allans-iMac.ho  Sun Mar  6 23:34  14/464   "test"
?

You can type ? for help, or just select the message number, in this case 1 to read the message. If you want to delete the message, type d1. When you are finished type quit.

To go back to a message that has been saved in your mbox, just issue the command:

mail -f ~/mbox and it will open the mailbox of the currently logged in user. From there, you will be able to access read/reply/delete to mail that no longer shows up as unread. Please note that the "f" option has to be lower-case.

For a full listing of commands, just type man mail for the manual pages or go to mail command for reference.

Improve this answer
2
  • ok, what I was doing before is typing mail and then scrolling through the messages with the ENTER key. then it tells me it saved the messages in my box but I have no idea where that is. and the messages are no longer there when I type mail again
    – Joff
    Mar 7, 2016 at 5:12
  • 1
    Ok...I updated my answer to better reflect the question.
    – Allan
    Mar 7, 2016 at 12:58
5

box can be found at /Users/<username>/mbox and it is just an archived version of the mail, which can be accessed by mail -f and then deleted through the normals means of the mail program

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .