Mail and file too large

[Paulo J. Matos-2]

Hello all,

Something terrible happened. I have the smtpd server working (or so it
seems) and fetchmail was supposed to get my gmail messages and send
them to postfix. Postfix was supposed to keep them locally so I could
check them, however, something is happening that messages of the form:
-----------------------------------------------
This is the mail system at host socrates.localdomain.

I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not
be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below.

For further assistance, please send mail to postmaster.

If you do so, please include this problem report. You can
delete your own text from the attached returned message.

                  The mail system

<pmatos@...> (expanded from <pmatos@localhost>): cannot
   update mailbox /var/spool/mail/pmatos for user pmatos. error writing
   message: File too large

Final-Recipient: rfc822; pmatos@...
Original-Recipient: rfc822;pmatos@localhost
Action: failed
Status: 5.2.2
Diagnostic-Code: x-unix; input/output error
-----------------------------------------------

have been thrown to the gmail account through gmail smtp. Gmail seemed
to have blocked my account and hundreds of people have been receiving
emails from me with this kind of message. I checked the dir:
socrates mail # pwd
/var/spool/mail
socrates mail # ls -la
total 50072
drwxrwxr-x 2 root   mail     4096 Jul 11 15:03 .
drwxr-xr-x 7 root   root     4096 Jul  7 21:32 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root   root        0 May 17 22:14 .keep_net-mail_mailbase-0
-rw------- 1 pmatos mail 51199575 Jul 11 15:03 pmatos
-rw------- 1 root   mail     5841 Jul 11 11:34 root

Anyone has any idea of what's happening? Since i have about 5 Gb of
mail in gmail I would thinking keeping all the emails on a file would
not be a good idea.

Cheers,
--
Paulo Jorge Matos - pocm at ecs.soton.ac.uk
http://www.personal.soton.ac.uk/pocm
PhD Student @ ECS
University of Southampton, UK

[Wietse Venema]

Paulo J. Matos:
> <pmatos@...> (expanded from <pmatos@localhost>): cannot
>    update mailbox /var/spool/mail/pmatos for user pmatos. error writing
>    message: File too large

The default mailbox size limit is:

    mailbox_size_limit = 51200000

> Anyone has any idea of what's happening? Since i have about 5 Gb of
> mail in gmail I would thinking keeping all the emails on a file would
> not be a good idea.

5GB mailbox files are insane; consider using maildir instead.

http://www.postfix.org/postconf.5.html#home_mailbox
http://www.postfix.org/postconf.5.html#mail_spool_directory
http://www.postfix.org/postconf.5.html#mailbox_command

For files over 2GB, Postfix needs to be compiled with "large file
model" enabled on 32-bit Linux and Solaris.

        Wietse

[Duane Hill-2]

On Fri, 11 Jul 2008, Paulo J. Matos wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> Something terrible happened. I have the smtpd server working (or so it
> seems) and fetchmail was supposed to get my gmail messages and send
> them to postfix. Postfix was supposed to keep them locally so I could
> check them, however, something is happening that messages of the form:
> -----------------------------------------------
> This is the mail system at host socrates.localdomain.
>
> I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not
> be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below.
>
> For further assistance, please send mail to postmaster.
>
> If you do so, please include this problem report. You can
> delete your own text from the attached returned message.
>
>                  The mail system
>
> <pmatos@...> (expanded from <pmatos@localhost>): cannot
>   update mailbox /var/spool/mail/pmatos for user pmatos. error writing
>   message: File too large
>
> Final-Recipient: rfc822; pmatos@...
> Original-Recipient: rfc822;pmatos@localhost
> Action: failed
> Status: 5.2.2
> Diagnostic-Code: x-unix; input/output error
> -----------------------------------------------
>
> have been thrown to the gmail account through gmail smtp. Gmail seemed
> to have blocked my account and hundreds of people have been receiving
> emails from me with this kind of message. I checked the dir:
> socrates mail # pwd
> /var/spool/mail
> socrates mail # ls -la
> total 50072
> drwxrwxr-x 2 root   mail     4096 Jul 11 15:03 .
> drwxr-xr-x 7 root   root     4096 Jul  7 21:32 ..
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root   root        0 May 17 22:14 .keep_net-mail_mailbase-0
> -rw------- 1 pmatos mail 51199575 Jul 11 15:03 pmatos
> -rw------- 1 root   mail     5841 Jul 11 11:34 root
>
> Anyone has any idea of what's happening? Since i have about 5 Gb of
> mail in gmail I would thinking keeping all the emails on a file would
> not be a good idea.

Looks to me you may have run into the default mailbox_size_limit.

Can't really determine if you have. You didn't supply the output of
'postconf -n'.

However, looking at:

   http://www.postfix.org/postconf.5.html

it does state the default is:

   51200000

which you are definitely over.

-d

[Magnus Bäck]

On Friday, July 11, 2008 at 17:29 CEST,
     "Paulo J. Matos" <pocm@...> wrote:

> Something terrible happened. I have the smtpd server working (or so it
> seems) and fetchmail was supposed to get my gmail messages and send
> them to postfix. Postfix was supposed to keep them locally so I could
> check them, however, something is happening that messages of the form:
> -----------------------------------------------
> This is the mail system at host socrates.localdomain.

[...]

Next time post log entries instead of bounce messages.

> <pmatos@...> (expanded from <pmatos@localhost>): cannot
>    update mailbox /var/spool/mail/pmatos for user pmatos. error writing
>    message: File too large

[...]

> socrates mail # ls -la
> total 50072
> drwxrwxr-x 2 root   mail     4096 Jul 11 15:03 .
> drwxr-xr-x 7 root   root     4096 Jul  7 21:32 ..
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root   root        0 May 17 22:14 .keep_net-mail_mailbase-0
> -rw------- 1 pmatos mail 51199575 Jul 11 15:03 pmatos
> -rw------- 1 root   mail     5841 Jul 11 11:34 root

http://www.postfix.org/postconf.5.html#mailbox_size_limit

[...]

--
Magnus Bäck
magnus@...

[Magnus Bäck]

On Friday, July 11, 2008 at 17:47 CEST,
     Magnus Bäck <magnus@...> wrote:

> http://www.postfix.org/postconf.5.html#mailbox_size_limit

That said, do follow Wietse's advice about not using mbox for this.
They do not scale.

--
Magnus Bäck
magnus@...

[mouss-2]

Magnus Bäck wrote:

> On Friday, July 11, 2008 at 17:47 CEST,
>      Magnus Bäck <magnus@...> wrote:
>
>  
>> http://www.postfix.org/postconf.5.html#mailbox_size_limit
>>    
>
> That said, do follow Wietse's advice about not using mbox for this.
> They do not scale.
>
>  

and in addition, put something like this:

set postmaster <postmaster@...>
set no bouncemail

in your fetchmailrc.