Subject: Sysadmin task: limiting INBOX??

From: "Lynne Seamans" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Dec 97 13:14:39 EST

My users are getting carried away with incoming mail, and I
would just like to know what's the easiest way to control
the amount of space used up by an INBOX?

Running Solaris 2.5 and have tried setting user quotas
on /var.  SENDMAIL ignores them and appends incoming mail
anyway.  Have tried symbolic link of /var/mail/userid to
a file in userid's home directory, but all mail gets bounced
complaining of the link...  Others have suggested PROCMAIL
as a delivery agent, but that sounds very difficult..

Any ideas?

---

From: Norbert Koch <[email-masked]>
Date: 17 Dec 1997 07:02:54 +0100

>>>On Tue, 16 Dec 97 13:14:39 EST, "Lynne Seamans" <[email-masked]> said:

 LS> Running Solaris 2.5 and have tried setting user quotas on /var.
 LS> SENDMAIL ignores them and appends incoming mail anyway.  Have
 LS> tried symbolic link of /var/mail/userid to a file in userid's
 LS> home directory, but all mail gets bounced complaining of the
 LS> link...  Others have suggested PROCMAIL as a delivery agent, but
 LS> that sounds very difficult..

Hi, 

I don't know, but on our Sun, sendmail is started up per default with
the uid of root. This might cause the ignorance of the daemon to your
quota settings. Perhaps, but this is a blind shot - beware, you should
run sendmail under a different uid and set quota restriction for this
user in /var.

Then again, I'd prefer the procmail variant, if that's possible.

I really don't know, because at our site I allow the users to read all
their mail: The amount is not that disturbingly high and I don't want
to decide whether an incoming mail is important to the recipient or
not. In order to make this decision I would have to read message
which is absolutely impossible from my point of view (think of privacy
and system administration and don't forget temporal aspects). But this
touches aspects of system admin philosophy and should not be discussed
on this list.

only my 2p, norbert.

-- 
Norbert Koch
a rattlesnake that doesn't bite teaches you nothing!