/var/mail filling up

Dave Filchak dfilchak at SYMPATICO.CA
Fri Dec 3 06:52:46 GMT 2004


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Aha ... I knew I wasn't crazy and had seen that somewhere. Thanks Ugo!

Dave

Ugo Bellavance wrote:

> 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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>
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