I just managed to read my email. Normally this is fairly simple task
(telnet to the machine I need to, and type "mail"). However, this time
it wasn't so simple. I had to find a machine with sufficient /tmp to
read in the mail file.
Why so difficult? Some dimwit decided to retrieve ALL the archives at
once. Brilliant. And of course, when mail to them failed (either due to
their mailbox filling or the destination site barfing on the traffic),
it bounced to me. I had over 20MB of bounced email to try and weed out
of my mailbox.
So impressed am I that I made the first entry in the ".ignored" file
for the listproc, and now this person will never be able to use the list
again.
Please be careful when using the archives. The 4MB size I gave before
was the compressed size. It appears the uncompressed size is more like
20MB. Anyone that tries to retrieve all of this in one hit and it
bounces, will likely find themselves in a similar position as the last
person that did it. (If you do do this, you might wait a few days before
begging forgiveness.)
On a separate but related topic, if you're going away for a while, or
if you like to keep your mail in your mailbox, keep in mind some ISPs
have a limit on the size of mailboxes. I'm getting quite a few people
with full mailboxes of late, and have to unsubscribe them to stop the
bounced email. Either save your email to a separate file and download
it, or if you're going on holidays you can use the postpone option.
frustratedly
-steve