host configuration problem re: mailbox in our ~

[Google Code Exporter]

Our Postie cronjob appends an e-mail to mbox every 5 minutes.

Over time, this will obviously create a quota problem if our mbox size gets out 
of hands.

Until this is fixed, remember to run "rm mbox" sometimes in our home directory.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by [e-mail] on 31 Jul 2007 at 7:08

[Google Code Exporter]

Obviously the first thing to pop to mind is to apply Puukko(tm) to Postie so 
that it
checks if cur_time-timestamp(mbox) > MAGIC and clears it before appending. 
Naturally
the downside is that this would be our own patch which would have to be
re-implemented should we upgrade postie. 

Perhaps a better alternative would be to add "rm ~/mbox;touch mbox;" in our 
cron? :-)

Original comment by [e-mail] on 1 Aug 2007 at 8:32

[Google Code Exporter]

I certainly thought about the "cron rm" solution.  I'd rather fix the root 
cause than apply hacks to fight effects 
of the problem.

cron rm might work, but I'm concerned about race condition.  What if postie is 
fetching e-mail at the same 
time that cron is nuking mbox?  Oh well, that's probably very improbable, I 
have to admit.. :)

I guess if the cron nukes mbox once a week, there's very little chance of this 
actually causing us any trouble.

Re Postie: I don't think we should touch its source code.  I looked at its 
source code yesterday to fix the image 
scaling issue.  The source code looks like a mess, and I'm not willing to touch 
it, at least not more than to just 
fix the scaling problem.

How about a beer today after work btw?

Original comment by [e-mail] on 1 Aug 2007 at 9:06

[Google Code Exporter]

There is no mbox anywhere on the shell account to speak of.

I guess this has been obsoleted by some of the server moves.

Closing.

Original comment by [e-mail] on 5 Feb 2008 at 8:51

• Changed state: Fixed