[SOLVED] - There is mail, but mail command reports "No mail for root"

[warron.french]

I have several cronjobs that are creating mail messages being sent to root.
I know this is true because the size of the /var/spool/mail/root file is large.

If I am sitting at the shell as root, and I simply type:

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mail

The response is:
No mail for root

Knowing that there are mail messages in /var/spool/mail/root I used the command:

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mail -u root

This did work.

I used to be able to simply type the mail command before my server's recent rebuild. What can I do to restore this level of ease
(simply typing: mail)?

Do I just need to set the MAIL variable in /root/.bash_profile ?

[TrevorH]

How did you become root?

[warron.french]

Since this latest build, auto-hardened by our vendor, I can only execute:
sudo bash

This tells me that the problem is the MAIL variable is still set to the account of the person/identity executing "sudo bash."

[TrevorH]

Yes, that's why.

You need to use sudo su - to get a login shell that does not inherit the parent's environment (i.e. $HOME is set correctly etc).

[warron.french]

Thanks TrevorH,
I am going to stick to the mail -u root command.

Thanks for the validation.