Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!mp.cs.niu.edu!rickert
From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail
Subject: Re: Disk quota on /var/spool/mail
Message-ID: <1991Apr20.002645.25662@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Date: 20 Apr 91 00:26:45 GMT
References: <1991Apr19.163757.14374@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
Organization: Northern Illinois University
Lines: 26

In article <1991Apr19.163757.14374@ccu.umanitoba.ca> mills@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Gary Mills) writes:
>I'm getting concerned about the amount of disk space some users have
>on our mail spool.  Enabling disk quota there would be one way to
>control this.  Will anything terrible happen if I do this?  I assume
>that /bin/mail will report an error and sendmail will bounce the mail.

  It depends on the type of error.  It is quite possible that the error status
reported will cause the mail to go into the queue (presumably on the same
disk partition) for another attempt next time the queue is run.

>We run SunOS 4.1.1, with NFS and NIS, if it matters.

 Well, it probably does matter.  I believe that the Sun systems require the
mail spooling directory to be publically writeable, which makes it much more
difficult to control this problem.  If you can prevent a user from accessing
the mail directory, and can set up a program alias to deliver his mail to
a file in his home directory you can make this the user's problem instead of
your problem.  (Of course you should only take such drastic action for known
miscreants.)


-- 
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  Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science               <rickert@cs.niu.edu>
  Northern Illinois Univ.
  DeKalb, IL 60115                                   +1-815-753-6940