/var/mail filling up

[Ugo Bellavance]

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Dave Filchak wrote:
> 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.

Well, not entirely wrong.  It can do it, but you have to enable it.  See
the clean.quarantine script in cron.daily.

> 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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>>
>
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