Incoming mail queues 1

[Tardigrade]

Hello all,

I want to know if there is an easy way to remove selected messages from a users incoming mail queue ( ie /var/spool/mail/<username> on my system ).

We have a user with an unbelievably slow dial-up connection who has a gigantic message awaiting download which he can't stay online long enough to download and thus can't read the rest of his mail.

The only way round it that I can think of is to manually edit the file which I am loathe to do because of privacy issues and also it may be difficult and time consuming.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Cheers
--
Scott

 

[gerald]

If PINE is available on the server, you can use it to delete messages or move them to a backup folder or something.

Otherwise, you can open a telnet session to port 110 and login as the user, and manually delete the message that way.

ie:

You: telnet mail.mydomain.com 110

Server: +OK <8542.973093149@mydomain.com>

You: USER myusername

Server: +OK

You: PASS mypassword

Server: +OK

You: LIST

Server:
1 916
2 1821
3 24964
4 6982283
.

after you type LIST it gives that list of messages, the first number on a line being the message number, and the second number being the size of the message.

So in my example we see that msg number 4 is almost 7megs in size and is probably the one you want to get rid of, so type:

DELE 4

the server should respond with +OK, and then the message is gone.

Hope that helps. Let me know if you have any questions.

Regards,
Gerald