MacOS – does terminal say: “You have mail”

emailmacosnotificationsterminal

Any idea why my Mac terminal says:

You have mail in /var/mail/lofye

How can I make it stop saying that every time I open terminal?

Best Answer

Somehow you've had a script or something similar deliver mail to your account on your local machine which is stored in /var/mail/$USER

You can either remove the file /var/mail/$USER which will remove the alert that you have mail (as it will alert you if that folder is present and/or has unread messages) or you can use mail to read the messages before deleting them.

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Linux – Why does the LD_LIBRARY_PATH get unset launching terminal

The terminal binary is most likely setgid to group utmp. Setuid and setgid binaries unset LD_LIBRARY_PATH for security reasons; see ld.so(8):

The necessary shared libraries needed by the program are searched for in the following order

Using the environment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH (LD_AOUT_LIBRARY_PATH for a.out programs). Except if the executable is a setuid/setgid binary, in which case it is ignored.

macOS – Safely Remove ‘You Have New Mail in /var/mail’

The old school way is to open a terminal and use

mail

at the prompt, then

to delete one message or

d1-4

for for four messages.

Then

to quit.

If you don't want to delete them unread, just type Enter at the mail prompt and it'll show each message in turn.

Use

man mail

for all the details.

Of course, other more sophisticated mail clients may be available, but that will do it.

Best Answer

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Linux – Why does the LD_LIBRARY_PATH get unset launching terminal

macOS – Safely Remove ‘You Have New Mail in /var/mail’

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