LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: nick morrison <nickm@lynx.net.au>
  To  : David Newall" <davidn@rebel.net.au>, "Wong Jen Choong, Jimmy <davidn@rebel.net.au>
  Date: Thu, 4 Mar 1999 19:35:41 +1030

RE: /var/spool/mail

Hello all :)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the main problem isn't that the mail
isn't deleted from /var/spool/mail, but that the POP client is told
there's -no- waiting mail.

I've had the problem when someone has sent me an email of about 4M or more...
suddenly my mail program (outlook, eudora, fetchmail.. I've tested them all)
tells me that there's no mail waiting to be picked up.

What happens then is that people keep sending email, the file gets bigger and
bigger because my client believes there is no waiting mail, and it becomes a
mess.  I have twice had to ask my ISP to erase my mailbox file in order to use
my email again.

I'm relieved that someone else has had this problem :)  Maybe we can find a
fix for it :)

--
Nick Morrison
nickm@lynx.net.au


> -----Original Message-----
> From: davidn@augustus.tellurian.com.au
> [mailto:davidn@augustus.tellurian.com.au]On Behalf Of David Newall
> Sent: Thursday, 4 March 1999 5:33
> To: Wong Jen Choong, Jimmy
> Cc: Linux SA
> Subject: Re: /var/spool/mail
>
>
> On Thu, 4 Mar 1999, Wong Jen Choong, Jimmy wrote:
> >  Why is that the spool is still keeping their old mails?
> > Is there any way for me to reduce that amount of space?
>
> They probably are using POP and not deleting the mail from the
> server.  You could delete early messages whenever their mailbox
> grows too large ("early" = "at the start of the file"); or set a
> disk quota and bounce messages when they reach quota; or delete
> messages older than N days.  All of these options make sense because
> all are automatic.  Don't go the option of writing a mail message
> to your customer asking them to turn on the "delete mail from
> server" option because this wastes your time.
>
> --
> Check out the LinuxSA web pages at http://www.linuxsa.org.au/
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