mail messages

[Murugs]

I am logged in as root and in my var/spool/mail directory I found listing like this

-rw------- 1 root 0 132011928 Jul 31 10:18 root

Being a beginner my understanding is that root login mail messages are nearly 132 MB. Shall I delete this file since I am running out of space. If I delete this file will it create any problem.

Regards
MP

 

[KenCunningham]

Your understanding is correct - someone's not been reading the mail and then deleting it. You could read each mail item and then delete it, but perhaps the universe will have ended by then. I'd suggest doing a tail -100 | pg on the file to see what kind of messages it contains and if it doesn't look too significant zap it and recreate it using:

> root

or

touch root

in the mail directory (check the permissions afterwards)

If there are significant messages, or ones that look like they might be, you'll need to investigate these. I'd also suggest looking at whether every process which sends mail to root REALLY needs to do so. Good luck.

 

[Murugs]

Thanks for the information