Guys,

I have a user with a very large mail file (126 MB) which contains some 300 odd e-mails. Unfortuantly this needs to be downloaded over a satellite link. This is very slow and the user is unable to download any mail at all. I don't believe the file to be corrupt as I can look at the mail using the mail command.

Is there a convienent way that I can seperate out the file into mutilple files of say 25 or 50 messages and allow the user to download his mail gradually.

Can I do this with the mail command? I need to specify a range of say 25 or 50 messages. I can create temporary accounts for each batch of messages.

Is there a convienent way I can do this? Has anyone encountered such a problem in the past.

You're assistance is greatly appreciated, sorry kinda new to Linux.

Thanks,

Andy

Hi there,

I don't know much about the nature of these files, be they text or binary, however something to keep in mind is simply arbitrarily cutting up the file into 10mb chunks (or whatever size the user needs so they can download it). Also, if you provide the file over an ftp server, they can use a client that can "resume" downloads, allowing them to tackle the file in smaller sessions.

I hope someone else can provide a better answer.

-pcweirdo.

Hey,

Unfortuantly that wont work as the file needs to be segmented by messages not by size, as this could literally cut an e-mail or attachment in half! Thanks anyways for the suggestion.

Anyways, I've worked out how to resolve this so thought I should tell you all.

If I create another empty file in the /home/spool/mail/ directory (home of the mailboxes) I can use the mail command to move a number of messages into this file. If I then rename this file to the user's mailbox name then the user can download those messages. This is the basis of it! I could use multiple files etc to get all the messages or keep using the same file each time the user has emptied it.

You can issue the "mail -f <mailbox>" command to view a mailbox, then after that you can issue the "s <msg range> <file>" from the mail prompt to move messages to another file, so "s 1-10 user" would move the first 10 messages into a file called 'user' to be downloaded!

Hope this helps anyone who finds themselves in a similar position!

Thanks,

Andy.

An excellent solution, thankyou for posting!

-pcweirdo.