1

Is there a way to change the ~/mbox file where mailutils's mail program saves read mail and where mail -f reads from to something else, like ~/.mbox for example? I read that setting the MBOX environment variable does this but I tried setting it to both ~/.mbox and $HOME/.mbox and neither did anything for me. For reference, I tried setting MBOX both just by setting it in the current terminal session and by using the env command, and neither worked.

7
  • Please provide more detail on the situation, such as how/where you set the env variable MBOX. These may help though doc.dovecot.org/configuration_manual/mail_location wiki2.dovecot.org/MailLocation/mbox
    – Joe
    Feb 27, 2020 at 4:33
  • @Joe There, added some more info. I'm not sure if those links are relevant though since they're for Dovecot and I'm using mailutils, unless they're compatible or something?
    – tdeary
    Feb 28, 2020 at 0:05
  • ~/.mailrc is the configuration file you should be altering not ~/.mbox
    – Joe
    Mar 2, 2020 at 6:58
  • @Joe I wasn't trying to edit ~/.mbox, that's what I wanted to rename my user mailbox file to so it wouldn't be visible all the time, and I wanted to know if there were any config options that would let me do that.
    – tdeary
    Mar 2, 2020 at 20:56

1 Answer 1

0

In mailutils 3.14 the MBOX environment variable seems to work:

export MBOX=.fubar

will coax mail into saving your messages in ~/.fubar. Note: no directory specified here.

I keep a statement like this in my .profile so it is the login environment.

You must log in to answer this question.

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