Empty/delete/remove my solaris mailbox

[hcclnoodles]

I have a user called user1 whose mailbox is so big (the user runs hundreds of cronjobs all generating mails) that when i launch the command 'mail' i get

mail: Too many letters, overflowing letters concatenated


and then it scrolls for ever and ever


I want to remove/empty/delete this mailbox, how do i do this

thanks and regards
Gary

 

[alray]

If you remove /var/mail/user1 that will get rid of all outstanding mail but as soon as another mail is generated the file will be recreated.

Ray



Even a bad day at the races is better than a good day at the office.

 

[Mike042]

You could try (assuming the default mail location is the one in use):
cp /dev/null /var/mail/user1

I hope that helps.

Mike

 

[hcclnoodles]

cheers

 

[KenCunningham]

And if you want this done on a regular basis, add it as a cron job, perhaps triggered by the size of the file.

 

[marrow]

Does "user1" really need the output, if not, can they add the following to all their crons >/dev/null 2>&1
This should stop their mail


0 3 * * * logs/deleter.ksh >/dev/null 2>&1
0 2 * * * logs/zipper.ksh >/dev/null 2>&1