[CentOS] Why I get this message " You have new mail in /var/spool/mail/root " ?

[Keith Keller]

On 2013-12-19, Norah Jones <nh.jones01 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Why I get this message  " You have new mail in /var/spool/mail/root "   in CentOs?
>
> My queries are the following -
> 1.  Why this is generated ?

Because root has mail in his mailbox.

> 2. How to disable this ?

You can disable the message with biff n (IIRC).  You can also redirect
root's (future) mail to a user mailbox by modifying /etc/aliases and 
running newaliases when done.  (That will not do anything with mail
already delivered to root.)

> 3. Is this system generated ?

The message is system-generated.  The mail is very likely output from
various system jobs, like cron jobs or other daemons.  In theory a
person could have send a message to root but that's not very common.

> 4. Is this message gain any importance ?

The only way to know is by reading the messages!  Some of them may
simply be informational, others may be important.

--keith

-- 
kkeller at wombat.san-francisco.ca.us