You have mail. Well apparently i do.

[Solvision]

Hey guys

I've just installed Debian 3.1, first time linux user.

When i log in it says "You have mail."

What is it? but more importantly, how do i view it?

I tried viewing it with "pico mail" but says Permission denied: mail and kicks me back out.

[placeb0]

just type 'mail' :P hehehe

[Solvision]

i get

-bash: mail: command not found

[Giles]

A few other text-mode mail programs you might have are elm, pine or mutt - try just typing one of those.

Giles

[Solvision]

Nope.

I just installed Debian 3.1, net install. if that helps.

[daark.child]

I think you have to install a package called nail (not mail) in order to get the mail command.

[Giles]

OK. The chances are that email is a general "welcome to debian" message, that you probably wont suffer too much if you dont read (I cant say for sure, because I've never used debian, but that's the case when you install slackware, for example). And indeed you probably wont get any more mail sent to your user name, unless you share a network/computer with other linux users, who chose to communicate with you that way.

However, if you want to make sure, I'd recommend installing one of the programs mentioned - someone'll correct me if I'm wrong, but I think in debian the best way would be to type

apt-get pine

into a console (you'd have to be root to do that, tho)

HTH
Giles

[Solvision]

OK, well so far i am only at the text level.

I went: su, then password, the 'apt-get pine' and i got:

E: Invalid operation pine

I get the same with all of them.

[AlexK]

try

apt-get install pine

[antidrugue]

Unfortunately pine is only available as a source package in Debian. So you would have to do :

apt-get build-dep pine
apt-get source -b pine

You can install nail instead :

apt-get install nail