Edit: /usr/share/doc/pam/txts/README.pam_mail (2009B)
pam_mail — Inform about available mail
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
DESCRIPTION
The pam_mail PAM module provides the "you have new mail" service to the user.
It can be plugged into any application that has credential or session hooks. It
gives a single message indicating the newness of any mail it finds in the
user's mail folder. This module also sets the PAM environment variable, MAIL,
to the user's mail directory.
If the mail spool file (be it /var/mail/$USER or a pathname given with the dir=
parameter) is a directory then pam_mail assumes it is in the Maildir format.
OPTIONS
close
Indicate if the user has any mail also on logout.
debug
Print debug information.
dir=maildir
Look for the user's mail in an alternative location defined by maildir/
. The default location for mail is /var/mail/. Note, if the
supplied maildir is prefixed by a '~', the directory is interpreted as
indicating a file in the user's home directory.
empty
Also print message if user has no mail.
hash=count
Mail directory hash depth. For example, a hashcount of 2 would make the
mail file be /var/spool/mail/u/s/user.
noenv
Do not set the MAIL environment variable.
nopen
Don't print any mail information on login. This flag is useful to get the
MAIL environment variable set, but to not display any information about it.
quiet
Only report when there is new mail.
standard
Old style "You have..." format which doesn't show the mail spool being
used. This also implies "empty".
EXAMPLES
Add the following line to /etc/pam.d/login to indicate that the user has new
mail when they login to the system.
session optional pam_mail.so standard
AUTHOR
pam_mail was written by Andrew G. Morgan .