lockmail.maildrop command not found

In this troubleshooting guide we learn how to fix lockmail.maildrop command not found error message

Introduction

When you run more command in linux terminal / console, you get the following error message

lockmail.maildrop: command not found

or when using sudo you get the following error message

sudo: lockmail.maildrop: command not found

Solutions to lockmail.maildrop: command not found

How To Fix lockmail.maildrop: command not found in Ubuntu / Debian / Kali Linux / Raspbian

In Ubuntu lockmail.maildrop is provided by maildrop package.

maildrop is:

maildrop is a mail delivery agent (MDA), a program which reads a mail message from standard input and then delivers the message to your mailbox.

maildrop can deliver mail both in mbox and maildir storing formats. It can read instructions from a file, directing it how to log deliveries, and how to filter incoming mail, for example to deliver mail to alternate mailboxes, or forward it somewhere else, or pipe it through external programs.

It performs all the same functions as procmail, but unlike procmail, maildrop uses a structured filtering language which is a bit easier on the eyes. Other differences from procmail include not skipping syntax errors in filter files (instead deferring the mails for later processing) and being more resource-efficient when processing mails (not loading large messages right into memory).

maildrop in this package sets its permission to “rwxr-sr-x” (set-GID) and is owned by “root:mail”.

maildrop also comes with the following additional programs:

  • reformail, an e-mail reformatting tool, which can detect duplicate messages, manipulate message headers, split mailboxes into individual messages, and generate autoreply messages
  • maildirmake, which creates maildirs, and maildir folders
  • deliverquota, which delivers mail to maildirs while taking account software-imposed quotas
  • reformime, a utility for reformatting MIME messages
  • makemime, which creates MIME-formatted messages of arbitrary complexity
  • lockmail, which creates dot-locks, file locks, and C-Client folder locks
  • mailbot, a MIME-aware autoresponder utility

To fix this problem, we can install more using the command below.

sudo apt-get -y install maildrop

This command might take some time to finish depending on your machine internet connection.

You can also use apt command to install maildrop.

sudo apt -y install maildrop

Or if you have aptitude installed you can use the following command.

sudo aptitude install maildrop

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to fix lockmail.maildrop command not found error in Ubuntu / Debian / Kali Linux or Raspbian distribution.