/var/mail filling up

[Dave Filchak]

Hi Mike,

Well, I do not offer IMAP to very many of my users. Just a few and they
are no problem because they know what they are doing. However, the
problem accounts are POP3 accounts and it seems I have a few people who
get a ton of mail, have their accounts set to not download from the
server, MAY have their account (or perhaps not) to delete from server
when the trash is emptied, but then they never empty the trash. I could,
I suppose, email each of them and get them to set their email accounts
up they I would like them AND get them to empty the trash, but I know it
will happen again.

I might move the spool and symlink as I have another directory that
would be suitable. Although I will certainly reconsider this the next
time a build a machine.

Yes I pruned the quarantine today. Duh ... for some reason I thought
that MailScanner deleted files in the quarantine older than say 30 days
or some other configurable time. I guess I was wrong. Did it manually today.

Thanks Mike as always.

Dave

Mike Kercher wrote:

>Dave Filchak wrote:
>
>
>>Hello all,
>>
>>I have a bit of an issue building on my main mail server. I hope
>>these are appropriate to this list because I am thinking that it has
>>something to do with MailScanner/MailWatch. If it is not, my
>>apologies.
>>
>>My /var/ partition is filled almost to capacity and so I am trying to
>>resolve this issue for very obvious reasons. A couple of things that
>>perhaps someone here can help with.
>>
>>Problem #1::
>>When I run the command mailq, it says that /var/spool/mqueue is empty.
>>However, there is 182 mb of mail in that directory. When I run mailq
>>-OQueueDirectory=/var/spool/mqueue.in it says that the mqueue.in
>>directory is also empty. but there is 44k worth of mail in there. So
>>my questions is why the commands show these to be empty when they are
>>not and how can I resolve this?
>>
>>Problem #2::
>>The server was never initially set up with quotas and so there are a
>>good number of my email clients that leave messages on the server and
>>fail to practice good housekeeping. So my question is: Is there a way
>>to initiate directory quotas on the mail spool (or file size quotas
>>perhaps being more correct?) after the fact? Is it considered ethical
>>to delete mail in users mailboxes that are older than say 2 or three
>>months?
>>
>>I have less than 5% space left on this partition and so this is a
>>matter of some urgency. Again, if this is inappropriate for this
>>list, please accept my apologies in advance.
>>
>>Dave
>>
>>
>>
>
>I try to get my users to NOT leave mail on the server.  I don't offer IMAP
>for a reason.  Depending on your POP3 daemon, you can force the users to
>delete mail upon checking.  I use cucipop and it has options to allow this.
>It basically forces the user to download their entire mail file each time.
>They will get tired of getting ALL of their old mail over and over and
>finally fix their MUA.  For users that refuse to comply, I will delete their
>mail file right after I see them check it.
>
>For problem #1, you could look at the timestamps on the files in question.
>Also, see if there are matching qf/df pairs.  If they are obscenely old,
>just delete them.
>
>Now, for the /var partition filling up, you *could* move /var/spool/mail to
>another partition with adequate space and then symlink /var/spool/mail to
>the new location.  Are you pruning your quarantine at all?
>
>Mike
>
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