One thing I forgot to try. Suggested by Berndt Wulf
was this...

gus# sendmail -bd -q30m
gus# mail -s "test message" root < /etc/defaults/rc.conf

...and the message did arrive. I could read it with
mutt. And I had gotten mail at startup all along when
I would login to root... 

Regards,

Gan

--
Mysterious Starling -- Rarest Extinct Bird
     _         
   <(+)__        Gan Uesli Starling 
     ((__/)=-    Kalamazoo, MI, USA
      `||`      
       ++        http://starling.ws 

Newbie-2-Newbie NetBSD Unix How-To Pages at... 
http://om-ah-hum.com/share/gus_netbsd_index.html