3/12 Why not just mv ccytsao /tmp; ln -s /tmp/ccytsao /var/mail/ccytsao
\_ There. Done. Not so hard if you make an effort.
One issue is that you are not supposed to fuck with people's
files unless absolutely necessary, and even not then.
People just need to be reminded to be more responsible
CSUA citizens and clean up their mail spool. --samli
\_ why not just get a fucking clue? -tom
\_ I say we rm -f /var/mail/tom
\_ boy that's clever. -tom
\_ You want to fill /tmp forever with some fool's mail spool? That's
not what /tmp is for. The Powers That Be should do their jobs and
deal with this instead of letting the spools grow. Either decide
that it's ok or put some hard limits on them. Or do the intelligent
thing and use procmail to dump mail into people's home directories.
I can't believe that all these years later, the CSUA has continuously
failed to elect even *one* effective officer who has the clue and
the balls to deal with this. Doubly so since this is such an
incredibly trivial issue to take care of.
\_ What's up with all those people who want to put people's inbox
into the home directory. This is what /var/mail is for.
What if we run out of space on some of the /home directories?
\_ Because then you can easily quota someone's total disk space.
What is next? Move people's home directories back to /var/mail
and ban usage of /home for storing personal pr0-n and other
stuff? I thought that average CSUAer is smart enough to figure
out how to use procmail to sort their mail into files in their
home directory if they really want to.
\_ Because then you can easily quota someone's total dick space.
\_ Because then you can easily quota someone's total disk space.
One number for all usage. They want lots of mail and nothing
else? They want lots of space for something else but don't
have mail here? Some other combo? It's more efficient and
easily done. This is classic sysadmin stuff. I thought the
CSUA was a sysadmin farm? Why is such a simple and trivial
concept so hard to grasp and implement? Obviously the
average CSUAer is not smart enough to figure out how to use
procmail or even how to use /bin/mail to clean their mail
disk. Don't go there. Be smart. procmail everyone.
spool. Never trust the users to do the right thing. That's
what a sysadmin is for. To make the right thing happen even
if the users are too stupid, ignorant, arrogant, or apathetic
to do the right thing. Just do it. Do the right thing. And
God, don't even get into "we're going to ban personal p0rn".
Never, ever, but, never ban anything of the sort. You get
dick. Don't go there. Be smart. procmail everyone.
into all sorts of ugly issues far worse than a filled mail
disk. Don't go there. Be smart. procmail everyone.
\_"Classic sysadmin stuff"? I haven't seen a single
place on campus that does this. Keeping incomming mail
in /var/mail and user files in /home also allows you to
have a separate dedicated email server and a separate
server for /home without a big NFS performance hit.
You could argue that some mail will be written to
an NFS mounted /home partition this way too, but in
-most- cases, the messages end up in /var/mail still.
The purpose of procmail is not to just dump everything
in your home directory. It is mostly used to sort
incomming messages by subject/mailing list into separate
files and the regular mail is still supposed to end up
in /var/mail.
Also many programs by default expect your inbox to be
in /var/mail (xbiff and pine for example)
\_ you can also tell them to look elsewhere, foolio.
\_ Campus is obviously not a good place to learn how to
properly admin a system. xbiff and pine are enduser
programs easily recompiled. xbiff is no excuse to
stupidly admin your system. procmail has many
purposes. As a user you may have discovered only
one use of it. NFS has nothing to do with this.
disk already.
\_ Uh huh, until *that* disk fills and then what? What
I don't see why you brought it up. In fact, I'm
having a hard time seeing your point at all which is
in part why my reply is so disjoint.
no new disk until a decision is made about a soda
\_ Recompiling ALL of user mail software is trivial?
Sounds like a pain in the ass to me. I'd rather
play solitarie or xbill than bother doing this.
\_ It wasn't compiled the first time? Lazy,
disk space or something? What if you run out
space on /home? Buy more disks? ...oh wait
I forgot, buying new disk is a lazy way to
dick already.
\_ Uh huh, until *that* dick fills and then what? What
lazy, lazy....
\_ This is just a plain stupid solution. Get a new freaking
disk already.
no new dick until a decision is made about a soda
\_ Uh huh, until *that* disk fills and then what? What
a dumb, stupid, lazy way to admin a box. Try adding
2 lines to sendmail.cf. Anyway, the esteemed dans,
President, has already clearly stated there will be
dick space or something? What if you run out
space on /home? Buy more dicks? ...oh wait
I forgot, buying new dick is a lazy way to
no new disk until a decision is made about a soda
upgrade. Can't wait til some of you get jobs and
tell you boss the answer to everything is to throw
money at it. That'll go over well.
\_ Are you assumming that your /home has infinite
disk space or something? What if you run out
space on /home? Buy more disks? ...oh wait
no, a bigger disk won't solve anything.
I forgot, buying new disk is a lazy way to
admin a box... you can just shot yourself
at this point.
\_ Where've you been? No. This has been
covered several times. Don't be dense.
\_ sign your name twink. --jon
\_ Signing my name will fix the endless mail spool stupidity?
Or it will simply allow you to make personal attacks and
dismiss everything I have to say with a single smear? Name
one good reason why there's still a mail spool issue after
all these years. There's nothing twinkish about what I said.
It's the truth and too fucking bad if it hurts. My anonymity
doesn't make it any less true. Address the issue. It
no, a bigger dick won't solve anything.
doesn't matter who I am.
\_ Actually, in this case signing your name will just put
you on the grouchy-soda-alum hit list.
\_ True. I'd sign if I thought that might make the
difference between the last several years of mail
spool do-nothing and setting up procmail properly.
But you're right. It won't do anything but give
dans and a few others a name for their target. And
no, a bigger disk won't solve anything.
\_ there's just times when signing your name is a no-no
\_ Can't we run a delivery agent that enforces a size limit on each
user's mailspool? Or write a script to do it? How many systems
have I seen that include the ONE MAILSPOOL FILE in a user's quota
and take appropriate action? The procmail debate is ridiculous.
\_ Good point. Just hack mail.local,or whatever.
\_ There's no procmail debate. |