Re: [cobalt-users] RE: kill a single email message in a pop box

["Rob Evans" <robe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Kevin D [mailto:kdlists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, March 09, 2001 8:55 AM
To: isp-unix@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: cobalt-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: kill a single email message in a pop box


I'm looking for a utility that could allow me as a root user to log into any
spool mail file and delete just a single message. I had to do this today but
in order to get it done I had to grant the user shell access, log in as the
user, and use pine to remove the offending email. Is there a utility that
will allow me to do this without logging in as the user? Sort of like a pine
program that allows me to select a mail file?

Thanks,
Kevin
--------------
Kevin,
I've had to do this several times on my Qube 1 - I telnet in as root and use
mail:

cd /var/spool/mail
mail -f username
(within mail use the following sub-commands)
f <message list>         give head lines of messages
d <message list>        delete messages
h                               print out active message headers
?                               display list of sub-commands
q                               quit, saving unresolved messages in mailbox
x                               quit, do not remove system mailbox

If the mailbox for "username" is rather large you may have trouble with there
being insufficient space in /tmp, which is where mail does its work.  When this
happened to me, I called for the assistance of my nearest Unix guru.

Regards, Rob E.