qmail folder is 3.8Gb!!!
 

We've got a dedicated server running fedora core 2.

We're having some problems logging into Horde, it just keeps giving us the login screen without any error message. We also have some php scripts which send emails out, and they are not sending either.

I tried locating a file today, but locate said the database was corupt, so I tried updatedb, only to be told that there isnt enough space on the partition.

I've had a look, and it seems like the qmail folder is using up 3.9Gb of a 4Gb paritition.

I have no idea where to start with this as I've never used qmail before, but I assume I need to clear some stuff out of this folder, but I'm not sure what.

The /qmail/queue/ folder is 2.8Gb, so I assume this is where everything is.

My guess is that your queue is full of joe-job bounces. Either that are one of your users is infected with a virus. The queue is messages waiting to be sent. You can see how mayn messages are in there by running Do *NOT* simply start deleting files from the queue; you could cause irrepairable damage to your queue. Check out www.qmail.org for tools to view the messages in the queue as well as remove messages from the queue.

thanks,

I resolved this issue by stopping qmail and then...

cd /var/qmail/queue
find intd todo local remote mess info bounce -type f -print |xargs rm

I restarted qmail and all is well again.

Thanks for the tip though I'll keep it for next time this happens.

Did you look to see what the queued messages were? Simply deleting them won't do you much good in figuring out *why* this problem happened in the first place.

How do I look at the queues. its just that the partition is full again today, as well as another partition where the maillog is held, the maillog file was 4.3gb

OK, you have several *serious* problems:

1) Your queue is inexplicably filling up quickly. This is not "just" a little problem.
2) Your maillog is filling up radpidly. This means you didn't install qmail per Life w/ Qmail, otherwise your mail logs wouldn't be that big.
3) The fact that you didn't install per LWQ means that you are probably also an open relay for spammers.
4) You obviously have no interest in actually *reading* your logs, otherwise you would probably find the cause of your problems.

My suggestion:

1) Shutdown qmail. Immediately.
2) rm -rf /var/qmail
3) Reinstall qmail per Life w/ Qmail
4) Read your logs!

The server was supply as is by 1and1, so I didnt install qmail.

I've reported the problem to them and left it with them to resolve, in the meantime I found that qmail was open to everyone so I've restricted it to authenticated users only.

We have no users that use the server as STMP, so it can only be someone who has exploited the fact that the server was left wide open.

In that case you probably want to change hosting companies. If they don't even know how to secure a mail server, god only knows what else they don't know. Sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.