Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!umich!itivax!vax3!scs
From: scs@vax3.iti.org (Steve Simmons)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.elm
Subject: Re: Request For Elm Feature
Summary: Disk space, elm, and mailboxes
Message-ID: <928@itivax.iti.org>
Date: 5 Apr 89 19:18:48 GMT
References: <919@itivax.iti.org> <4941@pbhyf.PacBell.COM>
Sender: news@itivax.iti.org
Reply-To: scs@vax3.UUCP (Steve Simmons)
Organization: Industrial Technology Institute
Lines: 31

In article <4941@pbhyf.PacBell.COM> rob@PacBell.COM (Rob Bernardo) writes:
>In article <919@itivax.iti.org> scs@vax3.iti.org (Steve Simmons) writes:
>+On another note, we ran out of /tmp space today and users lost
>+their messages (Elm 2.1 with some patches, BSD4.3 OS).  Has
>+errorchecking been added to handle this?
>
>Not yet. This may be a complex task: all fwrites, fprintfs,
>fcloses, etc. will need to be checked, and error information passed
>up a chain of functions to the proper level where the error can be
>appropriately dealt with. . .

Yeah, I knew how difficult it was when I asked.  I suspect one problem
is the way elm makes use of temporary mailboxes while it processes.  Since
elm already indexes the mailbox, why not just have it use the one in
/usr/spool/mail (or /usr/mail) until it actually has to modify it?  This
should cut down on the amount of disk io with mailboxes and the amount of
/tmp in use -- many users open a window with elm and leave it there all
day, needlessly filling up /tmp.  Then one can rewrite a mailbox in
place and never have to deal with the issue since, presumably, mailboxes
would usually shrink.  [[Yes, I know I can add mail to /usr/spool/mail/me.
But that's write-append, which does not blow you away when you run out
of disk.]]

More could be said in this vein, but it might get a bit techie for this
newsgroup.  And since I don't have the time to work on it myself, prescribing
a solution is kind of presumptuous. :-)  Anyway, thanks for the quick
response.

   Steve Simmons         Just another midwestern boy
   scs@vax3.iti.org  -- or -- ...!sharkey!itivax!scs
         "Hey...you *can* get here from here!"