/var/spool/mail - FULL

[philmcdonnell]

Hello,

I have an issue with my /var/spool/mail getting full..

Here is what is currently there:

/usr/varspool 97M 79M 14M 86% /var/spool/mail

Any ideas why this gets full and how I can stop it?

Thanks,
Phil

 

[nobaloney]

cd /var/spool/mail
# ls -al

That should tell you which linux usermailboxes have a lot in them.

Jeff

 

[philmcdonnell]

Yes I see who does, but what can I do about it?

Also is the spool directory for mail waiting to be delivered or is it for mail waiting to be downloaded via pop3?

Thanks,
Phil

 

[nobaloney]

It's for mail waiting to be downloaded via POP3.

If you don't need the contents of some of those mailboxes you can just delete them; they'll be rebuild later as needed.

However you should try to figure out why they got so full in the first place.

Jeff

 

[philmcdonnell]

It's for mail waiting to be downloaded via POP3.

Wow so it is a holder for everyones email? What if they don't delete their email off the server then this stays full....

It is only /usr/varspool 97M can I make it bigger or is it too late now?

Thanks,
Phil

 

[nobaloney]

It's for the mail used by the server-based users (the domain owners). And yes, unless they read it and delete it, it can get pretty big.

97 Megabytes for a /var/spool/ partition?

That sounds small to me. On new servers we create the /var partition as 3 gigabytes minimum, then put spool on the /var partition, and mail in the spool directory.

You can't resize it but you can abandon it and create a fixed-size file to use as a partition, presuming you've got room for one.

How to do it would depend on your OS, and it's a bit complex, not easy to explain but easy to get wrong, and getting it wrong can make your server unbootable.

Have an expert do it for you if you don't already know how .

Jeff