Local mail is a pretty cool concept that has all but died out. Because it is centered around one system mail gets delivered directly to each user, letting users customize how they recieve mail. One of the ways they can do this is though the .forward file. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The .forward file: sendmail will look for a file called .forward in your home directory. This file contains a list of entries to forward messages to. For example, if my .forward file consisted of: .forward: ``` steven paul uelen ``` then all messages sent to me (uelen) would get sent to steven, paul, and then a copy would finally get sent to me. Interestingly, the .forward file supports commands in addition to just usernames. You can stick a pipe in your .forward file, followed by a command, to pipe all of your email messages to a specified program. My .forward file looks like this: ~/.forward: ``` |/usr/bin/procmail ``` I pipe all of my messages to procmail, which takes them out of the mail spool and sends them to my Maildir. mutt, my preffered email client, can then interact directly with this mail. I can also get rid of the "You have new mail" message without actually deleting my mail :P I'll cover procmail in a future textfile