Mail in UNIX is both a command for sending emails, and a user file that acts as an inbox for system messages.

Checking Mail

The mail spool is located at /var/spool/mail/username (where username is your username), and is a file that can be opened with vi (or other file viewing commands).

Sending Mail

You can send mail to users (or email addresses, if you’ve gone through the work of configuring it….) through

$ mail euid123@their.system.email.com

Typically, the system email involves their username and hostname (so on Talon3 it would resemble euid123@talon3.hpc.unt.edu). Some options include the -r flag that can be used to specify the “from” address, -b for blind carbon copies, -c for carbon copies, and -s "Mail Subject" to specify the subject (in quotes).