Hi guys,

First up I run a Media Center/Mail Server/Web server from the same box:
i3 3.0ghz
Geforce 310
8 gb RAM
320gb primary WD 7200rpm 2.5" - due to size restrictions (i know not ideal)
2TB secondary WD Green 3.5" - storage

I am running Fedora 14 setup to use ISPconfig3

http://www.howtoforge.com/perfect-se...64-ispconfig-3

My main problem is that I receive a critical warning message via the ISPconfig browser menu when I log in that says:

2 Critical errors

1 is running out of space on the / directory
2 DNS service not running

So for the first one I did a du -h | "[0-9]G" so that all files with over a GB would show up and i noticed that in the /etc/getmail directory I have a file called dead.letter that is 39GB so I know that it has some major issues...

Now I am not that clued up with linux, I can get things to run but to know how they run I don't know that at all.

Therefore my questions are:

1. Why would getmail create such a huge file
2. Can I delete it (for now I've moved it)
3. How do I stop it from doing it again, because it caused my server to crash
4. Do i ask about the DNS issue in this thread or do i have to start another.

Thank you for your time
Steve

2. you should be able to
possibly as root.
If the system refuses, put dead.letter in it's own dir and
Be very careful with that cmd, especially if running as root!

4. Personally I'd start another thread for DNS issue.

also a bit of advice for running a "Mail Server/Web server"

you do not really want to use fedora for that .Fedora has a way to short of a life span
Unless YOU DO LIKE reinstalling all the software and reconfiguring a server EVERY 6 MONTHS
-- some do --
in 6 moths fedora 14 hits it "End Of Life"
so in 6 months all updates STOP
there will be NO security updates
No nothing
and fedora 16 will be the current

RHEL 6 has a 5 year life span
sl6 also has a long life but you will need to upgrade minor versions like CentOS ( CentOS 5.6 is current)

Ok I did remove it, well actually moved it to another partition - but I don't want to have to do this regularly.
So if someone could let me understand why it happens maybe I can prevent it.

yes I will do that thank you

Thanks for the quick reply though

steve

Good point, I was deciding which one to use however Fedora gave the ability to support ntfs out of the box where as centos 5.5 didn't. Hopefully that isn't the case anymore. But thank you for your advice.

Also I was wondering what would be your recommendation for a business grade distro? Would you use OpenSUSE or CentOS or ?

Thank you

Steve

Have a look in that file. After searching on the internet for dead.letter, it's my understanding that it either contains partially composed mail or mail that could not be sent because of email addresses that could not be resolved. If it's the latter, it might be related to your DNS warning.

Just type dead.letter in google

CentOS is prefered - I do not know why. I would prefer Scientific Linux to CentOS anyday. OpenSuse again is bleeding edge. I believe OpenSuse is a lot easier to administer than CentOS (maybe selinux is just a bit too difficult for me to understand).
If you look at the polls conducted debian won (again) as server OS of choice here - and debian has been winning here since a long long time. But then again I just want you to know that I am _heavily_ biased for debian.

cent 5.4 and 5.5 did support ntfs
it was a bug in 5.3 that caused 5.3 to need the dkms fuse kernel
5.6 dose support ntfs
http://wiki.centos.org/TipsAndTricks/NTFS


the question of centos VS ScientificLinux ???
is up in the air - except for rhel6.1 or SL6(or 6.1 beta) . There is no centos 6 yet

Ill try to address everyone in one post:

Hi, thanks for the reply. I'm looking into the file now it does have old emails and then a heap of randomized like encrypted information that goes on for a very long time. The weird thing is that it has been created again and is just going up in size.
It seems to be related to getmail though due to it being found in that directory, I have the one account setup in ISPConfig3 retrieving 2 pop3 accounts and sending via one of them. Due to the fact that I'm on a dynamic IP at the moment.
Yes Google is my friend.

I have dealt with CentOS as the flavor of Linux in my tertiary studies, which I didn't mind at all. As far as Debian I have never dealt with this distro. I will see what I can find out on it.

Oh right, well thanks for your input. I did use that wiki site for that. It was fairly straight forward, and seemed to work flawlessly. But I am a noob.

Thanks for the replies guys

Issue solved? Not clear to me. If so, please mark the thread accordingly...

I still don't know why it happens. I haven't been given anything to go on other than delete it every time it comes.

I would still like to know this:

1) What can I do to stop it?
2) Is it something wrong with my setup?

Thank you for your time

Steve

Sorry, I'm not familiar with getmail, I'm here to learn. I hope the true gurus will come to the rescue . As a workaround you might create a cron job to delete that obnoxious file...

Yes I will have to do that... although at the moment it hasn't come back recently so that is good. However is there a good tutorial website for cron?

Thank you
Steve

E.g.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Cron and links therein
http://www.gnu.org/manual/manual.html
http://webpages.charter.net/decibelshelp/
http://www.faqs.org/docs/
http://www.howtoforge.com/
http://www.linuxhowtos.org/Home/
http://www.docplanet.org/

...in no particular order. HTH.

Thank you for that... I will look into it
As far as I'm concerned I'm happy with nothing coming up anymore...
Thanks to all who contributed
Steve