RE: UPDATED - [cobalt-users] SOLUTION RAQ4R - Mail lock error 3 with NO ROOT

[flash22@xxxxxxx]

On Thu, 2 May 2002, Todd Kirk wrote:

> Hello all,
> 
> Many many thanks to the people that responded quickly and wisely to me
> problems. Just to let you all know I down the server and mounted the
> drives into another linux box and removed old maillog files. This opened
> some space on /var partition, and as long as you delete files from the
> primary drive of a RAQ4R the raid will then update and remove from the
> secondary drive.
> 
> To avoid this in future I have done the below -
> 
> 1. I made a junk directory and file (about 150K) owned by admin. This
> will let me login as admin and have a junk file to delete in case /var
> ever fills again.

Good idea

> 
> 2. Sym linked some directories off /var and onto /home.
> A. /var/log is now log > /home/log
> B. /var/spool is now spool > /home/spool
> C. Why the hell didn't Sun do that in the first place, this was a real
> time bomb problem!

Well, if it makes you feel any better, it's not really sun's fault,
i've seen other redhat machines do the same thing ;P


> Some question remain though. What happens if a spam attack or user goes
> crazy and sends a massive amount of email, would the spool directory
> just keep going and fill what remains of the 26Gb /home partition?

Yup, this is why some of us become homocidial when idiot users do things
like that ;P

 How
> would I limit this so Gb's and Gb's of email won't spool and deliver?
> How much do you think I should allow a for the logs & spooling? Or am I
> just silling for thinking this?

well, mail is limited somewhat because of user quota, but the logs are
considered 'important' , and besides , some of them are owned by
privileged processes exempt from quota, but it would take quite a 
while to fill 26 gig with log files.

The current versions of sendmail can run as non-root, which is nice
because you can enforce better quota's (eg you can set a quota for the
mail' user systemwide)

But some of us don't have the current version of sendmail (hint
hint-Sun?)

as an aside, putting logs on /home means you can't unmount it...

 /home/spool is fine, it used to be the normal setup...hmm

and just to make a certain someone happy...."You are taking the screws out
of the washing machine! you're gonna break it!"

:P

gsh