Subject: Re: dmail maximum mailbox size

From: "Bob Smith" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2003 17:03:03 -0700

this system routinely has 100-200MB free space in /tmp and 1+GB free in 
/var/tmp. there are no quotas on either filesystem.

it's quite possible that procmail is writing the messages to the tmp files 
(named 'msg.??' where '??' is a random two character string) after dmail 
delivery fails.

this behavior is totally independent of individual message size. the inbox 
is written to until it reaches 51200000 bytes, then the current message is 
truncated. since dmail is able to open and write to the inbox there is an 
implication that it has already successfully collected the message in /tmp 
or /var/tmp.

>From: Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>
>To: Bob Smith <[email-masked]>
>CC: [email-masked]
>Subject: Re: dmail maximum mailbox size
>Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2003 13:33:26 -0700 (Pacific Daylight Time)
>
>On Tue, 23 Sep 2003, Bob Smith wrote:
> > dmail seems to stop working properly when my mailbox size hits 50MB. i 
>have
> > procmail configured to use dmail to deliver to my inbox, when the 
>mailbox
> > hits 50MB it stops growing which corrupts the mailbox. once the mailbox 
>is
> > full dmail delivers to temp files in the same directory as the mailbox.
>
>There is no 50MB limit in dmail; however, dmail does collect the incoming
>message to a tmpfile(), which is typically (depends upon your C library)
>written to /tmp, /usr/tmp, or /var/tmp.
>
>If dmail is unable to write the entire message to the tmpfile(), it
>returns EX_TEMPFAIL to the calling program.
>
>Only after successfully collecting the entire incoming message into the
>tmpfile() will dmail even start to deliver the message to the mailbox.
>Mail delivery is atomic with no partial delivery; it either completes in
>entirely or fails entirely.
>
>There is no mechanism in dmail to "deliver to temp files in the same
>directory as the mailbox."  At least, there is not in the distribution
>version.  If you are using a third-party patched version, e.g. one with a
>maildir format driver, that may be a different story.
>
>-- Mark --
>
>http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
>Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
>Si vis pacem, para bellum.

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---

From: Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2003 17:15:19 -0700 (Pacific Daylight Time)

> (named 'msg.??' where '??' is a random two character string) after dmail

Nothing in dmail or the c-client library writes such files.

> truncated.

I wonder if this is also something in procmail, since that doesn't relate
in any way to any c-client value.

-- Mark --