VMS mailbox blowout
Malcolm Smeaton
HP rx3600 (1.42GHz/6.0MB) running OpenVMS IA64 V8.3-1H1
PMDF_SHARE_LIBRARY version V6.3-1; linked 16:43:47, Dec 27 2006
We use PMDF IMAP with native VMS Mail for our student mailboxes.
Recently a number of our students have suddenly acquired huge mailbox
sizes, e.g. 8 GB which have filled the disk. Closer inspection reveals
they are:
1. Typically using Thunderbird as an IMAP client
2. Deleting large messages or messages with large attachments using the
default setting "When I delete a message Move it to the Trash folder",
or
3. Moving large messages usually with large attachments from one folder
to another
The thing that bothers me is they are able to continue filling up the
disk even though they are way over quota.
The IMAP client setting "When I delete a message Move it to the Trash
folder" has never worked well with PMDF mail. Unfortunately it is the
default setting.
Does anyone have any suggestions how I can fix this?
I run a housekeeping job approximately once a week which deletes all
Trash and WASTEBASKET folders but that is not enough to manage these
runaway mailboxes.
--
Regards
Malcolm
Malcolm Smeaton, Server Group Leader
Information and Communication Technology Services
University of Canterbury Te Whare Wananga o Waitaha
Private Bag 4800, Christchurch 8140, New Zealand
Phone: 64-3-364-2333
Fax: 64-3-364-2332
Email: malcolm...@canterbury.ac.nz
Ken Connelly
1. On the VMS side, set the wastebasket folder name to be "Trash" so
that it matches up with Thunderbird. This can be done for others
from the SYSTEM account. I can probably come up with a command
procedure if necessary.
2. On the Thunderbird side, configure to "Empty Trash on exit".
That's not so easy as you've got to convince the users to do it.
- ken
Malcolm Smeaton wrote:
> %PMDF-I-VERSION, PMDF version is PMDF V6.3-1
> HP rx3600 (1.42GHz/6.0MB) running OpenVMS IA64 V8.3-1H1
> PMDF_SHARE_LIBRARY version V6.3-1; linked 16:43:47, Dec 27 2006
>
> We use PMDF IMAP with native VMS Mail for our student mailboxes.
>
> Recently a number of our students have suddenly acquired huge mailbox
> sizes, e.g. 8 GB which have filled the disk. Closer inspection reveals
> they are:
>
> 1. Typically using Thunderbird as an IMAP client
> 2. Deleting large messages or messages with large attachments using the
> default setting "When I delete a message Move it to the Trash folder",
> or
> 3. Moving large messages usually with large attachments from one folder
> to another
>
> The thing that bothers me is they are able to continue filling up the
> disk even though they are way over quota.
>
> The IMAP client setting "When I delete a message Move it to the Trash
> folder" has never worked well with PMDF mail. Unfortunately it is the
> default setting.
>
> Does anyone have any suggestions how I can fix this?
>
> I run a housekeeping job approximately once a week which deletes all
> Trash and WASTEBASKET folders but that is not enough to manage these
> runaway mailboxes.
>
>
>
--
- Ken
=================================================================
Ken Connelly Associate Director, Security and Systems
ITS Network Services University of Northern Iowa
email: Ken.Co...@uni.edu p: (319) 273-5850 f: (319) 273-7373
Selden E Ball Jr
Neither of Ken's suggestions work for us.
The underlying problem is a too-short timeout in Thunderbird
and an IMAP server which is "too slow."
The people responsible for Thunderbird refuse to do snything about it,
so the "fix" is a major mail server upgrade.
(Which we can't afford)
Our two workarounds have been
either
1) give the user a new empty account, making the old one a read-only archive
(probably not an option for you)
or
2) migrate the user to a completely different mail system
When the server takes too long, Thunderbird times out.
When Thunderbird experiences a timeout, it retries the operation.
If it's a deletion (i.e. move to Trash), thousands of copies
of the message which is being deleted are written to the Trash folder
and the disk fills up.
This usually happens when the user's mail folders already are "large"
(what that means depends on the performance of your server)
hence workaround #1 works for us.
At any rate, disk space can be recovered by the system administrtor
deleting messages from the user's Trash folder by issuing appropriate
commands on the IMAP server.
We use legacy VMS mailboxes and I use the following sequence
of commands to get rid of the surplus Trash:
$ PMDF MAIL
EMAIL> SET FILE to the user's directory
EMAIL> SELECT "Trash"
EMAIL> DELETE/ALL (moves them to WASTEBASKET)
EMAIL> PURGE (empties WASTEBASKET)
EMAIL> EXIT
$
I'm in the process of doing that now for someone for whom
Thunderbird generously created 33744 messages (> 1.5GB) in Trash
*sigh*
Selden
======
Selden E. Ball, Jr.
Cornell University Voice: +1-607-255-0688
Laboratory for Elementary-Particle Physics FAX: +1-607-255-8062
LT105 R. R. Wilson Laboratory http://www.lepp.cornell.edu/~seb/
Dryden Road Email: se...@cornell.edu
Ithaca, NY, USA 14853-8001
Malcolm Smeaton
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Selden E Ball Jr [mailto:S...@LNS62.LNS.CORNELL.EDU] On Behalf Of
> Selden E Ball Jr
> Sent: Saturday, 22 November 2008 10:21 a.m.
> To: Malcolm Smeaton
> Cc: info...@process.com
> Subject: Re: VMS mailbox blowout
>
> Unfortunately, we have been shafted by the problem multiple times.
>
> Neither of Ken's suggestions work for us.
>
> The underlying problem is a too-short timeout in Thunderbird
> and an IMAP server which is "too slow."
> The people responsible for Thunderbird refuse to do snything about it,
> so the "fix" is a major mail server upgrade.
> (Which we can't afford)
There is quite a bit of interest in a hosted solution such as gmail for
our students.
>
> Our two workarounds have been
> either
> 1) give the user a new empty account, making the old one a read-only
> archive
> (probably not an option for you)
No, I don't think that would be very practical in our environment
> or
> 2) migrate the user to a completely different mail system
That's probably not going to happen in the next several months.
>
> When the server takes too long, Thunderbird times out.
> When Thunderbird experiences a timeout, it retries the operation.
> If it's a deletion (i.e. move to Trash), thousands of copies
> of the message which is being deleted are written to the Trash folder
> and the disk fills up.
Exactly the symptoms we are seeing
>
> This usually happens when the user's mail folders already are "large"
> (what that means depends on the performance of your server)
> hence workaround #1 works for us.
Ditto
>
> At any rate, disk space can be recovered by the system administrtor
> deleting messages from the user's Trash folder by issuing appropriate
> commands on the IMAP server.
>
> We use legacy VMS mailboxes and I use the following sequence
> of commands to get rid of the surplus Trash:
>
> $ PMDF MAIL
> EMAIL> SET FILE to the user's directory
> EMAIL> SELECT "Trash"
> EMAIL> DELETE/ALL (moves them to WASTEBASKET)
> EMAIL> PURGE (empties WASTEBASKET)
> EMAIL> EXIT
> $
>
> I'm in the process of doing that now for someone for whom
> Thunderbird generously created 33744 messages (> 1.5GB) in Trash
Unfortunately this sounds very familiar. Even worse we charge our
students for disk space over 100 MB. It's how we try to control usage.
You can imagine how they feel about being charged for 8 GB when all they
tried to do was delete their messages.
Thanks, Malcolm Smeaton
Ken Connelly
default settings for things like PGFLQUOTA and BYTLM? If so, then
boosting those may help. From my
pmdf_table:dispatcher_mailbox_servers.cnf file:
! pgflquota is MAX_CONNS * 5000 + 100000 = 180000, but don't lower it
since it's already significantly higher
PGFLQUOTA=300000
! fillm is MAX_CONNS * 50 + 200
FILLM=1000
! enqlm is MAX_CONNS * 100 + 500
ENQLM=2100
! bytlm is MAX_CONNS * 5120 + 20480
BYTLM=102400
- ken
--
Jeremy Begg
You're not alone, the same thing happened here just a week or so ago. In
our case a particular user decided he needed to clean up his mailbox and the
PMDF IMAP server ended up creating over 80,000 messages in the WASTEBASKET
folder. Along the way the IMAP server processes used up all available RAM
and all available pagefile :-(
It occurred to me at the time that this might be avoided if the PMDF IMAP
server could detect that another process (or another thread in the same
process) was already "emptying the trash", and return an appropriate error
status to the client. (I don't know if such an error status exists.)
Regards,
Jeremy Begg
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Selden E Ball Jr [mailto:S...@LNS62.LNS.CORNELL.EDU] On Behalf Of
>> Selden E Ball Jr
>> Sent: Saturday, 22 November 2008 10:21 a.m.
>> To: Malcolm Smeaton
>> Cc: info...@process.com
>> Subject: Re: VMS mailbox blowout
>>
>> Unfortunately, we have been shafted by the problem multiple times.
>>
>> Neither of Ken's suggestions work for us.
>>
>> The underlying problem is a too-short timeout in Thunderbird
>> and an IMAP server which is "too slow."
>> The people responsible for Thunderbird refuse to do snything about it,
>> so the "fix" is a major mail server upgrade.
>> (Which we can't afford)
>There is quite a bit of interest in a hosted solution such as gmail for
>our students.
>>
>> Our two workarounds have been
>> either
>> 1) give the user a new empty account, making the old one a read-only
>> archive
>> (probably not an option for you)
>No, I don't think that would be very practical in our environment
>> or
>> 2) migrate the user to a completely different mail system
>That's probably not going to happen in the next several months.
>>
>> When the server takes too long, Thunderbird times out.
>> When Thunderbird experiences a timeout, it retries the operation.
>> If it's a deletion (i.e. move to Trash), thousands of copies
>> of the message which is being deleted are written to the Trash folder
>> and the disk fills up.
>Exactly the symptoms we are seeing
>>
>> This usually happens when the user's mail folders already are "large"
>> (what that means depends on the performance of your server)
>> hence workaround #1 works for us.
>Ditto
>>
>> At any rate, disk space can be recovered by the system administrtor
>> deleting messages from the user's Trash folder by issuing appropriate
>> commands on the IMAP server.
>>
>> We use legacy VMS mailboxes and I use the following sequence
>> of commands to get rid of the surplus Trash:
>>
>> $ PMDF MAIL
>> EMAIL> SET FILE to the user's directory
>> EMAIL> SELECT "Trash"
>> EMAIL> DELETE/ALL (moves them to WASTEBASKET)
>> EMAIL> PURGE (empties WASTEBASKET)
>> EMAIL> EXIT
>> $
>>
>> I'm in the process of doing that now for someone for whom
>> Thunderbird generously created 33744 messages (> 1.5GB) in Trash
>Unfortunately this sounds very familiar. Even worse we charge our
>students for disk space over 100 MB. It's how we try to control usage.
>You can imagine how they feel about being charged for 8 GB when all they
>tried to do was delete their messages.
>Thanks, Malcolm Smeaton
>>