Checking your mailbox quota

A disk quota is a limitation on the amount of disk storage a user is allowed to use for a certain purpose. Disk quotas are required to prevent anyone from tying up more than a fair share of this valuable resource.

The Alcor system has disk quotas on user mailboxes. Your "soft" quota matches the quota on your home directory (2500 Kb for most users). We have also established a larger "hard" quota (four times your soft quota, or, a minimum of 10 Mb) to allow users to receive mail from lists, or large letters, without problem. (This figure will be raised for 2008.)

It is important to make a distinction between the quota on your home directory, and the quota on your mailbox. The mail quota applies only to your "inbox". Therefore, if you move your messages from your inbox into another folder, you will be moving them from the area that's restricted by mail quota into your home directory, which is restricted by your home directory quota. You can read about how to check your quotas.

If you are over quota, you must clean out your mailbox by moving or deleting mail messages.

To check all of your account's disk quotas, use the 'vquota' command or the corresponding menu system options. The quota for /var/spool/mail will tell you about the quotas on your mailbox. (You must be logged into Alcor, for example via "puTTY", to do this.)

Your "mailbox" is the file "/var/spool/mail/user_name", which corresponds to Pine's folder "INBOX".

File Size Limits for Outgoing Mail

You may send out mail attachments as long as their total size does not exceed 50 Mb.

Rejected mail

If mail is sent to a user whose mailbox is "blocked" because it has been over its soft quota for longer than the grace period, the message will be returned to the sender with a "Returned mail" subject header, and a message that looks something like:

      ----- Transcript of session follows -----
      procmail: Quota exceeded while writing "/usr/spool/mail/joebob"
      550 ... Can't create output: Error 0

      ----- Transcript of session follows -----
      fclose: Disc quota exceeded
      binmail: cannot append to /usr/spool/mail/joebob 554
      ... Service unavailable

What to do when your mailbox is over quota

You must remove mail from your mailbox to get your account back under its disk quota for that filesystem (/var/spool/mail). You can do this either by deleting mail, or by moving it onto your home directory, assuming you have enough disk quota left on your home directory, or by moving it to your PC, if you are using Eudora or another POP mailer.

Pine
If you don't know how to delete mail using Pine, check the online Pine documentation section on deleting a message. You can move the mail from the INBOX folder to any other folder by using "S" to save the mail in another folder (the other folders reside on your home directory).

Webmail
Further information regarding Webmail can be found here. (If you need help with Webmail call the IITS Help Line at 514-848-2424 ext. 7613)

POP (Eudora)
If you are using Eudora, make sure that you have configured it to read and delete mail messages from the mail (POP) server.

POP (Other)
If you are using some other POP mail reader (such as Outlook) look through the options until you find something like "Leave Mail on Server" and make sure that it's not selected. If you choose to leave your mail on the server your mail reader will download a copy of each message for you to read but will also leave a copy of each message in your mailbox and eventually your maibox will be over quota. By erasing the mail on the server you will be keeping only the copy on your computer at home, and your mailbox will be emptied each time you check your mail.

Berkeley "mail"
If you are using the Berkeley "mail" command, you must make sure you quit with q and not x; that way, read messages will be saved on your home directory instead of in the system mailbox area.

MH
If you are using the MH mail system, just make sure you "inc" your mail regularly; this moves messages from the system mailbox area to your home directory.

If you are concerned that you cannot check your mail often enough to prevent quota problems, you can use procmail to file your mail on your home directory as soon as it arrives.

If you still have problems, please post your question to the newsgroup 'concordia.dept.iits.help', where people will help you.

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Copyright, © 2007, Concordia University, (IITS). Author: Dana Echtner Credits: Anne Bennett Maintained by: webdoc@alcor.concordia.ca Last update: 2007/08/14 -- Sheila Ettinger