Thunderbird and local mail ?

[Christopher Kelley]

You Wrote:


>Hi,
>
>System: 5.3-REL-p5
>
>I would like to get my local mail (from /var/mail/<user>) in my 
>Thunderbird (v1.0 - 20050310) mailbox.
>
>I found 
>http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2003-December/027652.html 
>which is talking about version 0.3... But I get the same message as 
>described after having created a movemail mailbox : "unable to create 
><user>.lock file". I've tried to set up a movemail for the user and one 
>for Root, but get the same message back.
>
>So, how do I get those local mails transferred into my mailbox ?
>
>Beni.
>

Hi,

The popup message on Thunderbird tells you (somewhat cryptically) what you need to do.   I believe it says something along the lines of:

---
Unable to create <user>.lock file. For movemail to work, it is necessary to create lock files in the mail spool directory. On many systems, this is best accomplished by making the spool directory be mode 01777.
---

The spool directory is /var/mail, so what I did was (as root), cd to /var, then 'chmod 1777 mail'. Please note that this machine is behind a firewall, and provides no services to the internet, so I'm not very concerned about any security holes doing this may open up.

I'm using Tbird 1.0, and I haven't touched my sendmail configuration from the "factory defaults". I redirected (via /etc/mail/aliases) the "root" mail to the normal user that runs X.

Christopher