    If you see the message "You have mail." at startup, but do not actually have
    any mail waiting for you, you most likely have some mail remnant left-over by
    your mail program from an earlier session.

    That message comes when the system checks:

      /var/spool/mail/$USER  # $USER is your username

    You can check the contents yourself by using cat(1):

      cat /var/spool/mail/$USER

    If the only thing you see is a system message saying something to the effect of
    "this is a default file, don't delete", then you CAN actually delete it to
    clear the message, like so:

      rm /var/spool/mail/$USER

    If you see anything else in the spool file then you really do have new mail.
    Open up your favorite mail program (e.g., alpine, mutt) and read it!

    Home