Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!munnari.oz.au!mundamutti.cs.mu.OZ.AU!kre From: kre@cs.mu.OZ.AU (Robert Elz) Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail Subject: Re: Disk quota on /var/spool/mail Message-ID: Date: 20 Apr 91 13:35:29 GMT References: <1991Apr19.163757.14374@ccu.umanitoba.ca> Sender: news@cs.mu.oz.au Lines: 27 mills@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Gary Mills) writes: >Enabling disk quota there would be one way to >control this. Will anything terrible happen if I do this? /bin/mail is setuid root (generally) and root is immune from quota restrictions, so quotas are never going to stop mail arriving for a user. The biggest effect will be on the poor luser who reads his mail (when its in a file bigger than the quota allows) and wants to leave it in the mail spool file (ie: uses Mail or some other stupid mailer like that). He will find a "write error" and half his mail gone missing. (Advanced lusers will keep the tmp file, and save their mail again someplace else, then mail it all back to themselves later, so its only the naive that really lose this way). You aren't likely to be popular... Quotas on mail filesystems are one of the bigger evils I can imagine. Quotas certainly have their uses, but managing /{usr,var}/spool/mail is so trivial without them, and they're so obnoxious there, that its really a very poor idea. If a message to abusers doesn't cause the problem to clear up, just take their mail file and move it to somewhere else. kre