Hi Sharon,

On Sun, Mar 12, 2017 at 10:55:05AM +0000, Sharon Kimble wrote:
> In an effort to get gnus to read root emails I've chowned
> /var/mail/mail, added myself to the 'mail' group, changed the
> permissions of /var/mail/mail, and generally frigged around with it.

That is not a good way to go about achieving this.

A better way to achieve the goal of being able to read emails to
root would be to edit /etc/aliases so that it contains something
like:

root: sharon

where "sharon" is your local user name.

That would cause email for root to be redirected to your username
where you could read it with your usual mail reading software. If
you don't read email locally then you could probably instead send it
to the email address you have used here:

root: boudic...@skimble.plus.com

> So how do I restart root sending logwatch etc again please?

I would start by putting the correct ownership and permissions back
on /var/mail/mail. It is normally owned by mail:mail with mode 0600.

If that doesn't help, try looking at the logs of your mail server
when you expect the emails to be sent. If using exim, that would be
/var/log/exim4/mainlog and /var/log/exim4/paniclog.

Cheers,
Andy

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