Description of problem: Run emacs Use "M-X rmail" to run rmail. It says that you have no mail even if there is mail in your /var/spool/mail/ file. If you force the spool file, for example with the line below in $HOME/.emacs (setq rmail-primary-inbox-list "/var/spool/mail/william") then rmail gives the error "Invalid mbox file¨. I can read my mail with other applications, so the problem is emacs-rmail and not the file format. I get mail with a cron job that runs fetchmail, and then I think that fetchmail forwards the mail to sendmail which writes it into the mail spool file. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): sony ~$ rpm -qa | grep '^emacs' emacs-common-24.0.97-1.fc17.x86_64 emacs-filesystem-24.0.97-1.fc17.x86_64 emacs-24.0.97-1.fc17.x86_64 sony ~$ rpm -qa | grep '^fetchmail' fetchmail-6.3.21-2.fc17.x86_64 sony ~$ rpm -qa | grep '^sendmail' sendmail-cf-8.14.5-12.fc17.noarch sendmail-8.14.5-12.fc17.x86_64 sony ~$ uname -a Linux sony 3.4.3-1.fc17.x86_64 #1 SMP Mon Jun 18 19:53:17 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux How reproducible: Happens every time. Steps to Reproduce: 1. Send your self mail. 2. Wait for the mail to arrive in your var spool mail file. 3. Run emacs and start rmail with M-X rmail. Actual results: It says that your mail file has no messages. Expected results: It should show the messages. Additional info: I looked on google and didn't see anything specific to this problem, but I did see a related issue where emacs can corrupt files if you configure it to ensure that files end with a newline. I have not set that option.
I found the problem. According to NEWS.23, rmail no longer converts messages to Babyl format. When I upgraded from Fedora 8 to Fedora 17, I restored my user account and everything inside it including the Fedora 8 $HOME/RMAIL in Babyl format. Rmail in emacs 24 couldn't handle the old Babyl format RMAIL. I fixed the problem by removing RMAIL and RMAIL~ (I save my mail to text files, so my RMAIL is usually empty except for the current batch of incoming mail.)
Created attachment 594324 [details] An old RMAIL file from Fedora 8
Ok, thank you for the clarification. I checked that rmail in emacs-24.1-1.fc17.x86_64 can read /var/spool/mail files created in recent Fedora.