_PATH_MAILDIR on i386 (but not sparc) is set incorrectly to /var/mail. This causes finger (and kbiff) to look in the wrong directory for incoming mail.
*** Bug 2730 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. *** when checking for a users' mail status finger expects the mailfiles in /var/mail instead of /var/spool/mail
This is fixed in the glibc 2.1.2 package. finger will have to be recompiled, though. The new glibc rpm will be available in rawhide shortly.
*** Bug 4722 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. *** Both finger and fingerd from new RH 6.0 packages (finger-0.10-24) search for user mailboxes in /var/mail, not in /var/spool/mail as it was on RH 5.2 (0.10-5). This occurs in local use as well as in remote user@server use. The only thing strace showed me was stat("/var/mail/jmeno", 0xbffffb68) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)