Chris Hardie writes:
> Howdy; please help ASAP: We're running Qmail on FreeBSD 2.2.8. Someone
> sent a 17 MB message to one of our users. /var, where qmail is located,
> is only a 30 MB partition, and with that message sitting in the queue,
> only has about 3 MB left on it.
>
> In the maillog, the message
>
> deferral: Unable_to_forward_message :_qq_write_error_or_disk_full_(#4.3.0)./
>
> appears repeatedly. There's plenty of space on the user's partition and
> their quota will allow for the message just fine. It appears that qmail
> somehow needs to re-write the message somewhere in it's own hierarchy on
> the same partition before it can forward it on.
Looks to me like the user has a .qmail file which says
'&somebodyelse', because qmail-local is trying to re-queue the message
for another delivery, and failing.
> I tried reducing the queue lifetime so the message would bounce, but qmail
> can't bounce it either, the same messages of "file system full" keep
> appearing.
Well yes, that wouldn't work either, because it can't inject the
bounce.
> I tried (much to your dismay) to move the queue directory to another
> partition, and got an error message at startup about "cannot start: unable
> to open mutex" so I didn't pursue that any further (can anyone say what
> "mutex" is?)
Yes, qmail tries to open a file mutually exclusively, as a lock.
> So, I'd *really* like to know:
> 1) In the short term, is there a way to deliver or bounce this message
> without just deleting the queue file manually?
Deliver yes, but not forward.
> 2) In general, did this problem arise because we improperly installed
> qmail to a small partition, or is there something about qmail that should
> be better in handling large messages (i.e. file system full problems)
> that it can't really handle?
Well, it's handling it as best it can, given the lack of space.
> 3) If it's a disk space issue, is there a way to have the queue
> directory somewhere else or do we need to move the whole ball of wax?
You can put /var/qmail/queue on a different filesystem.
> 4) Is there a way to restrict incoming/outgoing message size?
Incoming is easy: stuff the size into a decimal number stored in
control/databytes. That will tell qmail-smtpd to refuse mail that
large. Outgoing is a little tougher if you have user accounts.
--
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