fbackup and /var/spool/mqueue huge

[Pablo Arnaldi]

Hi!
I did a backup last night using "fbackup" and I saw this morning the /var filesystem full.
I found several files created during the backup under /var/spool/mqueue (more than 500 Mb created in less than 3 hours). What I m doing wrong?
Thanks in advance and best regards!

[Ken Hubnik_2]

Was this started with cron? If so than it is probably root's mail from cron.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

'mqueue' holds sendmail messages. Verify that the recipient specified for your 'mail' (or 'elm', etc.) command is valid, including any aliases.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Remote Systems Support]

Don't forget to check /etc/nsswitch.conf. Be sure that the services line is set correctly.
Have seen similar problems with the services set to NIS, instead of FILES

[W.C. Epperson]

What sort of names do the files have? Although the mqueue directory is normally used for queued sendmail messages, anything could be put there. Sendmail queue files begin with "df" for the message body and "qf" for the envelope.

Cron will attempt to e-mail the stdout and stderr of cron jobs to the job owner unless output is redirected. Depending on command options and the fbackup config, stdout and stderr can get huge. I suspect that what you're seeing are the "df" portion of the cron mail. Peek at the contents of the "df" file and figure out what to do to redirect/squelch what you want/don't want.

If you want to be sure of stopping the mail altogether, redirect the output of the cron job itself:
30 23 * * 1-5 /usr/local/sbin/fbackup.full > /tmp/fbackup.log 2>&1

Just make sure that you put it somewhere that has enough space. Or send it to /dev/null if you're sure you don't need it.