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Operating Systems AIX /var/spool/mail/<username> files' content wipeout impact Post 302906546 by bakunin on Friday 20th of June 2014 01:35:05 PM
Old 06-20-2014
Amen to what ibmtech and rbatte1 said, they are correct.

In principle it is the duty of the admin to read such messages. Having said this: reading several GB of text messages might take you longer than your active job life and i bet the first of these messages are from a time computers ran on steadm, not on electric power.

Therefore i suggest you: delete the mail file for "XXXX". This is an ordinary user and he should have checked his mail when he had the opportunity. This gives you some free space back.

Second, log on as root and open the mail. Delete all messages save for the last 100 or so and read these. Perhaps there is a pattern to them and what you have deleted is either outdated or repetition of this pattern anyway.

Do the same for the Oracle user. See the man page of "mail" on how to delete a range of messages. It will tell you how many messages there are in the inbox, so you can calculate how many you can delete. Note that they are sorted chronologically with the newest messages holding the highest numbers.

From now on you should read the mails to root and other system users daily. Either these messages are important and will help you better administer the system OR they are superfluous and you should switch their generation off at the source.

On a second thought: if you do not check the mail regularly you probably do not trim /var/adm/wtmp either. You might have a look at it and maybe trim it. DO NOT delete it! "zap" the file:

Code:
cat /dev/null > /var/adm/wtmp


I hope this helps.

bakunin
This User Gave Thanks to bakunin For This Post:
 

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IPURGE(8)						      System Manager's Manual							 IPURGE(8)

 *

NAME
ipurge - delete mail from IMAP mailbox or partition based on age or size SYNOPSIS
ipurge [ -f ] [ -C config-file ] [ -x ] [ -X ] [ -i ] [ -s ] [ -o ] [ -d days | -b bytes | -k Kbytes | -m Mbytes ] [ mailbox-pattern... ] DESCRIPTION
Ipurge deletes messages from the mailbox(es) specified by mailbox-pattern that are older or larger than specified by the -d, -b, -k or -m options. If no mailbox-pattern is given, ipurge works on all mailboxes. If the -x option is given, the message age and size MUST match exactly those specified by -d, -b, -k or -m. The are no default values, and at least one of -d, -b, -k or -m MUST be specified. Ipurge by default only deletes mail below shared folders, which means that mails in mailbox(es) below INBOX.* and user.* stay untouched. Use the option -f to also delete mail in mailbox(es) below these folders. Ipurge reads its configuration options out of the imapd.conf(5) file unless specified otherwise by -C. OPTIONS
-f Force deletion of mail in all mailboxes. -C config-file Read configuration options from config-file. -d days Age of message in days. -b bytes Size of message in bytes. -k Kbytes Size of message in Kbytes (2^10 bytes). -m Mbytes Size of message in Mbytes (2^20 bytes). -x Perform an exact match on age or size (instead of older or larger). -X Use delivery time instead of Date: header for date matches -i Invert match logic: -x means not equal, date is for newer, size is for smaller -s Skip over messages that have the Flagged flag set. -o Only purge messages that have the Deleted flag set. FILES
/etc/imapd.conf CMU
Project Cyrus IPURGE(8)
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