topic Re: Mail folder under VAR in Operating System - HP-UX

Mail folder under VAR

Raghuram Ollakal_1 — Thu, 03 Jan 2002 12:41:00 GMT

Our hp server we are not running any kind of mail. this server is our main NNM server with 30 users and we have a large network with 2000 cisco routers and switches. The VAR is getting near about 80% used, I was trying to clean it up to make som more space, while I am going through the VAR I noticed that there is a direct called " Mail" and under this directory there is file in the name of all our users and one file for root and another for bin, most of the users file is 0, but the bin and root files are reaily big I wonder since we are not running any mail application on this server why this folder and files, I reaily need to keep this file, can I deleate this file. or make it " 0 ".

Re: Mail folder under VAR

G. Vrijhoeven — Thu, 03 Jan 2002 12:53:43 GMT

Hi,

I would advice to scan roots mail before cleaning up. you can use mail from tho command line to read/delete your mail or vi the file and read trough it before deleting.

Gideon

Re: Mail folder under VAR

harry d brown jr — Thu, 03 Jan 2002 12:56:49 GMT

Raghuram,

If you are running cron's, then you are using mail. What was the full directory path?

live free or die
harry

Re: Mail folder under VAR

Paula J Frazer-Campbell — Thu, 03 Jan 2002 13:37:56 GMT

Hi
Cron by default mails it output to root this large root mail file will be the result of cron mails.

SO whilst your users are not using mail the system is and this mail to root should be monitored, ems and predictive can also use roots mail to warn/inform you of current/pending problems.

Enter mail as root user at the prompt.

q quit
x exit without changing mail
p print
s [file] save (default mbox)
w [file] same without header
- print previous
d delete
+ next (no delete)
m user mail to user
! cmd execute cmd

HTH

Paula

Re: Mail folder under VAR

James R. Ferguson — Thu, 03 Jan 2002 13:55:00 GMT

Hi:

As a general comment about space in /var, you might want to assess which directories occupy significant space:

# u -k /var|sort -nrk1|more

You might also want to trim log files like the /var/adm/wtmp and /var/adm/btmp if you are using them:

# cat /dev/null > /var/adm/wtmp

Old processor logs in /var/tombstones can be removed. Log #99 in the most *current*.

/var/preserve contains 'vi' recovery files which may no longer be needed.

A very large amount of space is often recoverable in /var/adm/sw by using *ONLY* the 'cleanup' utility (see its man pages). Removing files or directories in /var/adm/sw by any means other than 'cleanup' can lead to an un-patchable system! Use, for instance:

# cleanup -c 1

Regards!

...JRF...

Re: Mail folder under VAR

Sanjay_6 — Thu, 03 Jan 2002 14:20:42 GMT

Hi,

The mail files for root and bin and most probably system generated. Most of the time, the system will send a mail to root if there is a problem, say a root cron job didn't run or things like that. You can safely delete these files under /var/mail. The system will recreate the files next time. However it would be a good idea to read the contents of the file as you may come to know what are the mail being sent to root and if there is a problem somewhere that has been overlooked.

Hope this helps.

Regds

Re: Mail folder under VAR

Darrell Allen — Thu, 03 Jan 2002 14:50:30 GMT

Hi,

I also advise you to read root's mail before simply deleting it.

If root's getting mail from cron jobs, simply redirect stdout and stderr to a file or /dev/null from the cron job.

Normal users may also get mail when print jobs are canceled. Most of my users can't access command line so I simply blow away their mail.

Darrell

Re: Mail folder under VAR

Bill Hassell — Thu, 03 Jan 2002 20:10:58 GMT

Reading root's email is a good idea. If you have many servers, then redirect root's mail to a central address so information from any of the root accounts will always be read without having to make the rounds. To do this, edit the file:

/etc/mail/aliases

and setup these lines in that file:

uucp: root
daemon: root
lp: root
mailman: root
webmaster: root
hostmaster: root
postmaster: root
MAILER-DAEMON: root
adm: root
op: root
rlp: root
bin: root

root: monitor@another.machine.com

Repeat on all servers, then run the command:

# newaliases

While you are at it, you can eliminate all user email automatically with:

#!/usr/bin/sh
# /dev/null all user email
umask 027
for USER in /home/*
do
echo ":include:/dev/null" > $USER/.forward
chown ${$USER##*/}:mail $USER/.forward
done

What this does is to put a .forward file in every directory in/home. Modify it accordingly if you use something other than /home for user directories.