SUMMARY: weird dead.letter

From: Thomas Walter (tbw@everest.hunter.cuny.edu)
Date: Mon Aug 23 1993 - 16:41:07 CDT


Sunmanagers,

Here's a weird one...... every time one of our users starts up
openwin a dead.letter file (length 0) is created in his home dir.
He removes it and it reappears next time he starts openwin.

Not a high priority but a mystery. Any answers would be appreciated.

==========================================================================

The "dead.letter" is created by the mailtool. I got tired of seeing it in my
home directory all the time, so I made an entry in my ".mailrc":

  set DEAD=~/.deadletter

It's still in my home directory, but I don't see it anymore! I don't think I
have actually ever seen anything show up in it.

=================================================================================

This is a normal action of the mailtool program. The user is starting
mailtool with his OW session and it creates the dead.letter for its
own internal use.

================================================================================

dead.letter gets created automatically by mail no matter what. It's purpose
is to capture the contents of a letter you are composing in the case of a
crash or if a 'Clear' button is pressed. It's only effective if the line
"set save" is in you .mailrc file.

Your Openwindows DeskSet Reference Guide, p.281, has a brief discription
as well as the man page on mail.

================================================================================

The dead.letter seems to go along with MailTool in OW3. Though it
seems to be an annoyance, it *does* save the last created letter,
even if it is not sent, so you can get it back again. I've written
scripts to delete it, I've deleted it everytime I've seen it, I've
tried sprays, I've tried powders, but I still get dead.letter in my
home directory. Finally, I just accepted it and live with it taking



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