--------------- E-MAIL OVERLOAD --------------- Tis the season, as they say, and we're beginning to feel it in the form of seasonal e-mail overload. Every year e-mail volume is higher than usual from Halloween through Easter, putting an extra load on mail servers all over the Internet. Last year the load increased even more than usual due to the sudden popularity of e-mail greeting cards, usually in the form of graphical file attachments. This year has brought more of the same. The most serious effect on our mail system is that those large messages quickly fill up the "mail spool" disk, the disk on which incoming mail is stored. If that disk fills up, the mail server cannot accept any more new mail and the whole mail system comes to a screeching halt. In the past we have dealt with this by decreasing the maximum message size the system will accept. Effective immediately, we have broadened our approach to include the following measures: + The maximum message size is currently set to to 3 MB. However we reserve the right to lower the message size limit again should the need arise. + If you have not read e-mail within the past 45 days, your "mail spool file" will be deleted on the assumption that you don't want your mail. Your mail spool file is the file on the mail spool disk that contains all your incoming mail. It is what Pine sees as your "Inbox", and it is where POP3 mail programs like Eudora, Outlook Express, Claris eMailer, and similar get the new mail that they download to your computer. + We will scan on a regular basis for mail spool files that use an inordinate amount of disk space. Offenders will be notified via e-mail, and will be expected to reduce the size of their mail spool files to within the limit specified in the warning message. Generally this will be 2 MB, but may vary depending on prevailing conditions. Repeat offenders may lose their mail privileges on the system. What You Can Do --------------- It is your responsibility to keep the size of your mail spool file on the server as small as possible. This may require that you read your mail more often than you currently do. How often is often enough depends on how much mail you receive and how big the messages are. A user who receives only a few small messages each day can get away with reading mail less frequently than a user who is on lots of high-volume mailing lists, or who receives lots of large file attachments. It is also your responsibility to avoid using your mail spool file as dead storage for e-mail you have already read. What this means to you depends on whether you use a mail program on your own computer via a PPP connection, or Pine while logged into your UNIX shell account, as explained below. PPP USERS --------- If you use a Mac or PC based mail program (Eudora, Claris eMailer, Outlook Express, Netscape Navigator, etc.), you must configure it to remove old mail from the server. This ensures that once your new mail is downloaded to your computer, the original copies are deleted from your mail spool file on the mail server. Otherwise your old mail remains on the server forever, and your mail spool file eventually gets large enough to cause problems. Where you find this setting depends on which mail program you use. Somewhere in the setup you will find a radio button, checkbox, or menu choice labeled "Remove from server" or "Leave on server" or words to that effect. Regardless of the wording, you want the option that will remove mail from the server once it has been downloaded to your computer. If you can't find this setting in your mail program, or if you are unsure how to use it, please refer to your mail program's manual or contact the BCPL.NET Help Desk (410-887-3297 or help@bcpl.net) for assistance. Please note that deleting individual messages as you read them from within your mail program only deletes the copies stored on your own hard disk. It does not delete the message from the server. Only the "Remove from server" setting described above will do that. PINE USERS ---------- If you are a Pine user, be sure to delete Inbox messages you no longer need. If you want to save messages, do not simply leave them in your Inbox. Use Pine's "S" (Save) command to move them to saved-mail folders. Or, use the "E" (Export) command to save them as files in your home directory, then download them from there to your own Mac or PC. In either case the message is moved from the shared disk space (the mail spool disk) to your personal disk space (your UNIX home directory or your own hard disk). Pine users please note that this has nothing to do with mail you have stored in other Pine folders. Those folders are in your own disk space, so how full or empty you keep them is up to you. It is only your Pine Inbox that needs to be kept cleaned out. BCPL.NET INTERNET SERVICES CONTACTS: ----------------------------------- Administration & Policy: ispadmin@bcpl.net 410-887-6180 Sales, Renewals, Account Status: accounts@bcpl.net 410-887-4172 Technical Support (Help Desk): help@bcpl.net 410-887-3297 Usenet News Newsgroup Requests news-admin@bcpl.net 410-887-6180 E-Mail & Newsgroup Abuse Reports: abuse@bcpl.net 410-887-6180 FAX: 410-887-2091 Help Pages: http://www.bcpl.net/help.html (or enter "help" at the UNIX shell prompt) System News Archives: http://www.bcpl.net/sysnews.html (or enter "sysnews" at the UNIX shell prompt)