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Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!ncis.tis.llnl.gov!mcb
From: mcb@ncis.tis.llnl.gov (Michael C. Berch)
Newsgroups: news.software.b,news.admin
Subject: Re: How can I remain calm?
Message-ID: <526@ncis.tis.llnl.gov>
Date: 13 Oct 89 01:36:36 GMT
References: <1989Oct11.211031.10051@ee.rochester.edu> <1989Oct11.215444.11983@rpi.edu> <35575@apple.Apple.COM> <1989Oct11.235318.23465@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu>
Organization: Postmodern Consulting, Pleasanton CA USA
Lines: 32

In <1989Oct11.235318.23465@brutus.cs.uiuc.edu> coolidge@cs.uiuc.edu writes:
> chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) writes:
> >>brodie@moocow.mcw.edu requested the sys file of every site in the
> >>world with a "sendsys" control message.
> 
> >Gads. I hope he has a *large* disk in /usr/spool/mail.
> 
> Actually, he's on a VMS machine, so the mail goes directly into his mail
> folder analogue. He _might_ be safe if on a quota'd disk, since overquota
> mail might just be bounced --- unless mail has exquota privs. In that
> case, it's hello full user disk, and probably bye bye any mail (since
> the only reasonable recovery is mass delete).

Huh?  Am I missing something?   According to the newsstats posting
from uunet last week, there were about 5,100 sites posting news.  
The arbitron stats estimate a total of about 12,000 sites.  That's an
upper bound.  I'm willing to wager that no more than 7,500 sites are
able or willing to respond to a sendsys message.  I have no clue as to
the average size of a sys file, but ours is 2K bytes and is
horrendously verbose, with contact info for every feed we've had in
the last couple of years.  I constructed a couple of "normal" sys
files, and they seemed to be about 800 bytes -- let's round up to 1K.

Thus, 7500 * 1024 = 7,680,000 ~= 7.7 MB.   I'd say for all but the
home systems or PCs, an extra 7.7MB of mail over a few days ain't
going to fill up too many disks.  At most places I'm familiar with it
probably wouldn't be *noticed*, disk space-wise, though I'm sure the
size of the mailer log might attract attention.

--
Michael C. Berch  
mcb@tis.llnl.gov / uunet!tis.llnl.gov!mcb