For completeness, the solution was to add a 'session pam_mail' line to the /etc/pam.d entries in use for me. I too use Courier style mail directories, but I hadn't noticed the 'sshd' and 'gdm-autologin' (I autologin gdm, and ssh between two side by side systems) entries.
I could never get every terminal (ssh, gnome-terminal, xterm, etc.) session to have the $MAIL variable set so I would give up and uncomment the 'export MAIL=$HOME/Maikldir' line in my .bashrc. After adding pam_mail to gdm-autologin and sshd everything is working! Thanks all! -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
