Thanks, Bob. Both MAIL & MAILCHECK are set in the environment but I have set MAILCHECK=0 in .bashrc which ought to solve the problem. I've yet to find where it's set though in Squeeze. Much obliged, Mike
On Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 12:34:15PM -0600, Bob Proulx wrote: > Mike McClain wrote: > > But something is sending 'You have mail in /var/mail/mike' often > > in the middle of me typing a commandline or editing a file which can > > be most disconcerting & annoying. I get these messages even when the > > mail is old mail I just haven't thrown away yet. > > Can someone tell me what might be doing this and how to control it? > > This may be the shell's own built-in mail check. The bash > documentation for example says: <snip> > MAILCHECK > Specifies how often (in seconds) bash checks for mail. > The default is 60 seconds. When it is time to check for > mail, the shell does so before displaying the primary > prompt. If this variable is unset, or set to a value > that is not a number greater than or equal to zero, the > shell disables mail checking. > Bob -- Satisfied user of Linux since 1997. O< ascii ribbon campaign - stop html mail - www.asciiribbon.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20120717012323.GA8581@playground