UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Look at the associated message file for that - it should have something in it to show you what is causing these mail messages (it could be a run away cron job).

Yep I have found a run away crontab job which was trying to do a mv from a folder that does not exist . Oh well another job sorted . Thanks everyone for your input on this

false alarm the files are still being created . I have found that in /var/spool/mail the root mail has two files :

root
root.lock

Could this have anything to do with it?

You keep looking in the wrong place - look at the files being created - the contents should give you a clue to what is creating them. That is what you are after.

Another way of looking at it is if your car had an oil leak, would you remove all the oil from car? Of course not! You have to find the leak and fix it, not remove the oil. The oil (those messages) should give you a clue of to where to look. Just like the cron job you found.

I have already looked at the contents of these files posted the output here. I really do not know why they are being created as this process/program was never configured to send mail to users in this system. I wanted to suggested the above situation because I wondered if the system was trying to send a message to the root mail file but as it was locked it couldn't and therefore storing the messages in this folder.

I cannot think now where as to look. I really do need some pointers on where to go with this.

All sorted , it was the root.lock that was causing the problem. As soon as I removed it and started mmdf again the files in this directory have started to be removed and the root mail file has now being updated.