File Size Limit in /var/spool/mail

[Christofer C. Bell]

On 12/13/05, Manish Kathuria <manish at tuxspace.com> wrote:
> Is there any limit on the size of the mail spool files in the spool
> directory /var/spool/mail ? I have a user whose mail file is above 2 GB
> and procmail cant write any further mails there ? AFAIK, the file size
> limits are pretty high and in TB now.

2GB is the maximum filesize and it's due to limitations in the
operating system's filesystem driver, not any kind of quota.  There
may be other filesystem options for Linux or options you can feed
mke3fs that will allow larger files (like enabling "largefiles" on
vxfs) but I'm not sure what they are.  Anyway, as for your user's
email, there is nothing that can be done other than deleting some of
the mail there to make room for more.

If you want, you can backup the partition that the data is on, create
a filesystem there that's capable of supporting files larger than 2GB,
and then restoring the data.  Keep in mind that filesystems that
support larger files generally have less space available due to the
filesytem accounting information necessary to support the larger files
(which is handled much like segment + offset memory in the old DOS PC
days).

Best of luck!

--
Chris

"I trust the Democrats to take away my money, which I can afford.  I
trust the Republicans to take away my freedom, which I cannot."