F20 Where's my system mail? SOLVED (I Hope)

[Andrew Haley]

On 04/16/2014 09:31 AM, Arthur Dent wrote:
> Hello all, With what (I hope) will be my final update on this issue.
> 
> This machine is a simple home server. It runs headless and is on 24/7. I an in the habit running yum update once per month and only then rebooting (and only then because the yum update usually brings down a new kernel). I long ago left the Windows world where a reboot was required for - well everything really. Since this is a new install however I had rebooted a few more times than normal, but the last one was a few days ago.
> 
> Last night (more in desperation than anything else) I rebooted.
> 
> Today - Cron emails!
> 
> I am very sorry for wasting everyone's time. I have no idea what the problem was or why a reboot solved it - some environment variable perhaps?

Sendmail is like that.  This doesn't happen very often today, but in
the past people sometimes received messages that had been sent to them
months (if not years) before.  What had happened was that a mail
process had crashed leaving things in a bad state.  The server was
later rebooted, sendmail saw all the mails, and started to deliver
them.  It must have been distressing to receive an old message from an
estranged partner or someone who had died.

Andrew.