3.5.7 Personal and System-wide Configuration Files

After processing the usual Mailutils configuration files (see configuration), mail reads the contents of the two command files: the system-wide command file, and the user’s command file. Each line read from these files is processed like a usual mail command.

When run with --norc (-N) option, mail does not read the contents of system-wide configuration file. The user’s file, if it exists, is always processed.

The user’s configuration file is located in the user’s home directory and is named .mailrc. The location and name of the system-wide configuration file is determined when configuring the package via --with-mail-rc option. It defaults to sysconfdir/mail.rc.