Academic Computing & Networking Services

 Colorado State University

 

Cleaning up Disk Space

 

Cleaning up disk space on Simla or Lamar

Question: I received a message about being over my quota. What does this mean?

Answer: If you get this type of message or you are having trouble saving mail or files, then you may be over your disk space limit. This limit is referred to as your disk quota. Check out your account's quota by using the Quota Calculator for a quick look at your file space information. If your /var/spool/mail space is over quota you may need to delete several messages or messages that are large in size from your Inbox. There are two very common things that may cause your home directory to be over quota. 1) Your Sent Mail folder may be full, or 2) Your Trash folder may be full. In either case deleting the mail from the folder should move you below your quota. After deleting mail from any folder remember to delete the messages from the Trash folder. You may also want to look at any other mail folders you may have. This can be accomplished in different ways depending upon your email client. Please see the notes below for more information.

Using a mail program on your PC
You could be reading your mail with an IMAP program such as Netscape, Outlook or Eudora. You configure your mail reader for your PC to use the IMAP protocol to read your mail box on Simla or Lamar. The configuration you use determines how your Simla/Lamar inbox grows.

Using the IMAP protocol
Configure your mail software to use the IMAP protocol, making Simla or Lamar your server, and your directory to be "mail". When you use the IMAP protocol your messages remain on Simla/Lamar and are displayed on your PC. When you set up IMAP, you may have a number of options available that determine how deleted messages will be handled. Please become familiar with these options since this can determine when your deleted messages actually are removed from the server. Like using Pine, you should organize your mail into folders and be aware of large mail messages that could run out of mail box disk space.

Using Web Mail
If you use CSU's Web Mail you may want to adjust how long your sent messages are stored. You can do this after logging in to Web Mail by clicking on the Options icon at the top. From here you can adjust the number of days to retain messages in Outbox folder. This should prevent sent mail from collecting.

Using Pine via telnet
You may be reading your mail directly on the system by logging in via telnet and reading your mail with the Pine command. If you are over your mail quota and you are using Pine to read your mail then chances are you have too many mail messages or you have one or more messages that are very large. Each message has a number that gives the size of a message in characters. If you have a small number of messages in your inbox then look for one that has a large size. If you have a lot of messages then you may want to delete the ones you no longer need. For those you wish to keep, you should file them in a folder. Use the "S" command in pine to do this. The "L" command is used to select a folder for reading. Messages you save to folders become part of your home directory quota. The "L" command should list your Trash and Sentmail folders, this will allow you to select and then delete any messages from these folders.


Academic Computing and Networking Services
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