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Maintaining
Email Accounts
Introduction:
This document will provide instructions for maintaining
the size of your email account inbox on the CALS server.
This page is the main source of support for maintaining
your inbox size. Please refer to this page before
calling the Network Lab with your questions. If this
page leaves any of your questions unanswered, email
or call us and we'll be glad to help.
Why
is there an inbox quota?
There are two reasons why the CALS server has a quota on the
size of your inbox: limited disk space and server performance.
There are approximately 2500 accounts on the CALS server, and
that number is growing. Because resources are limited, conservation
of existing disk space is becoming increasingly important.
Furthermore, when a user accesses his or her email, it is
often the case that the entire inbox must be processed and
sent to the user's location on the network. The server's
CPU, memory, and network connection are used, and as inbox
sizes increase, these server components are more heavily
taxed. Server performance then suffers for everyone.
NOTE: Your inbox quota covers the size of your inbox
on the CALS server. Your outbox and saved-messages are not
covered by your mail quota. They are aither in your home
directory quota (if you use Pine) or are on your personal
computer (if you use a popper like Eudora or Outlook) and
therefore not affected by server quotas.
Checking
your inbox size:
To check the size of your email inbox on the CALS server,
send a blank message to quota@cals.Arizona.Edu. You will very
shortly get a response that looks like this sample:
-rw------- 1 pkelly ecat 2965489 Jul
14 15:09 /var/mail/pkelly
This inbox has about 2.9MB of email and email-attachments.
The size of your inbox (shown here in red), in bytes, will
appear just to the left of the date. Alternately, if you're
logged into the CALS server via a telnet
session, you can get the same information by typing this
command at the prompt (note that your login name should replace
the "your_username" shown):
ls -al /var/mail/your_username
How
to Reduce Inbox Size
- Pine Instructions
- Instructions for poppers such as
Eudora and Outlook
Pine
Instructions
To start Pine, connect to the CALS server with a telnet session
and type pine at the command prompt. If you need help
connecting via telnet, click here. While in Pine, enter the message
index by hitting "i". Select a message you
wish to delete by pressing the up and down arrow keys, and
then hit "d" to mark it for deletion. When
you quit pine, you will probably be asked if you want to
expunge the deleted messages from your inbox. Hit "y" to
have them deleted. If you are not asked whether or not you
wish to expunge the messages, your Pine settings are configured
to automatically remove the marked messages.
Instructions
for poppers such as Eudora and Outlook
Pop clients such as Eudora and Outlook download
a copy of your email (known as "popping") from
the server to a personal computer. It is important to note
that when
you check your mail, you're only downloading a copy: another
copy is left on the CALS server. When you delete the copy on
your personal computer, the server copy is not necessarily
deleted. You may have many messages on the server that were
deleted from your computer long ago. In order to keep the
server performing well and conserve dwindling disk space,
please keep your inbox small by changing the settings in
your email program. Some settings and their descriptions
follow. Note that if your CALS server inbox is already over
quota, and if you deleted messages from your personal computer
before making these changes, you will need to delete unneeded
messages with Pine.
- Leave mail on server
- This option specifies that a copy of your email
is to be left on the server. If you check your mail
from more than one computer, you should leave this
option checked. If you do leave a copy of your mail
on the server, you should use the options listed
below to keep your server inbox from getting too
large.
- Delete mail from server after X days
(Applicable if you leave a copy of your mail on the CALS server.)
- This option will cause your email program to delete your mail from
the server (but not the copy on your personal computer) when a specified
number of days from download have passed. If you check mail from more
than one computer, this option gives you some time to download copies
of your mail onto each computer you use before the server copy is deleted.
Generally, 4 or 5 days is sufficient time to download copies to all
of the computers you use. Note that the old email is deleted when both
A) the specified number of days have passed
and
B) you check your email again afterwards.
- Delete from server when emptied from trash
(Applicable if you leave a copy of your mail on the CALS server.)
- When selected, this option will remove unneeded messages
from the CALS server when you remove them from your personal computer.
Note that
just "deleting" the messages on your computer is not enough
to remove them from the server. You will also have to empty the pop
client's trash and then check your mail again.
Changing
these Settings in Eudora
When you have started Eudora, click on the "Tools" menu
and select "Options". Scroll the menu up
or down and select "Incoming Mail", or,
depending on your version of Eudora, these options may be
found under "Checking Mail".
Changing
these Settings in Outlook
In Outlook, Click on "Tools" and
select "Accounts".
Find your CALS account in the list of available accounts and
click "Properties". Then choose "Advanced" and
you should see the options listed.
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