The radio will store a small amount of packets (around 30) in its memory for when it's not connected to a client app. If it's full, it will replace the oldest packets with newly incoming text messages only.
https://meshtastic.org/docs/overview/
And yes, they persist if you restart the node. Not sure what you mean by “terminal”, there are a couple of CLI tools for meshtastic, including a practically complete chat app.
As far as I can tell my RAK stores them. Feels like it stores more than 30 but I'm unsure.
Try running 'meshmonitor'. It'll keep a history for you.
This is from memory and anecdotal, so take it with a grain of salt.
On firmwares below 2.7, I think it only stored the last-received message on the node itself. 2.7+ may store the latest message from up to a few different contacts, but not more than that (if even that). Either way, it's not really meant to operate as a "mailbox" where you can retrieve the messages later; they basically need to go somewhere as they're received.
There's a store-and-forward mode that can be enabled, but it stores all messages for everyone and is more of an infrastructure node role. It also requires hardware that has PSRAM which the Heltec V3's don't have.
Related:
Hmm maybe this is what I want: https://github.com/brad28b/meshtastic-cli-receive-text But I can't install it currently, I get python stack trace instead...
UPD. Fail. I've managed to launch it, but it is same as "listen", it receives only new messages in real time.
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