UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

Hi When trying to access my UNIX mail account I am getting this error message, can anyone suggest a way to get in and delete some of these messages please?

Can I simply delete my mail file or hack it with a text editor?

Thanks

A few questions first:

1) How are you connecting? Is it a POP account, or do you log onto the server interactively and run a mail client from there?

2) What error are you getting?

3) If you are logging onto the server, what mail client do you use? (mail, pine, mailx, etc...)

4) What Unix is it?

Hi,

Sorry about the error message omition.

The error was something like mail /usr/spool/mail/deggzy exceeds message number maximum of 1024

Using Client program Mail on Tru64.

What I have doen is:

cp deggzy deggzy_old
cat /dev/null > deggzy

I can look at the old file using more for example. is there any way to edit this file without the change of upseting anything?

Thanks

you can vi the file and delete the unwanted lines and save then copy it back into the mail directory.

It won't mess up the mail (elm) program.

Your mail program reads/creates a plain text file, there is no special formatting, except for the header info that it creates for each email.

You won't screw up the program by editing the file that contains your emails.

But you can try to delete complete messages, try not to leave a partial messages.