Topic: How do I clear out the Admin mailbox?

[digben]

Hi there,

our admin mailbox has become unusable because of bounce back emails to the postmaster@ address. Every week we send a mass email (using a separte mail server) to 250,000 of our registered users. A hefty chunk of these bounce back to the postmaster account on our main SME server and have subsequently rendered it inoperable. I had a machine running outlook which I had set rules for that was supposed to auto-delete these bounce-backs as they arrived to prevent them clogging up the system but clearly that didn't work.

I can find no mail client that is able to log onto the admin mailbox (for which postmaster is a pseudonym) anymore. I've tried outlook, t-bird and pine. So I am unable to manually delete the messages.

Obviously, since it's the admin account having the problems, I can't just delete it or the postmaster pseudonym as they are 'hard-wired' into the system.

Is there anyway to just clean out the admin mailbox? I am aware of ProcMail but that would require upgrading to 6.5 (we use 6.0.1), is thare a solution which does not involve an upgrade?

Kind regards and thanks for any help you can give,

Ben

[Janm]

In server-manager E-mail Settings
Administrative notices generated by the server are normally e-mailed to the admin account. If you would like them to be e-mailed elsewhere, please enter the e-mail address below. Otherwise, leave this field blank.
Forwarding address for administrative notices    Put your email address here if you are Admin then you get all the bounce email then you can delete
Whenever the server receives a message to an unknown user, it can be returned to the sender with an error message (recommended practice) or sent to your system administrator (as an administrative notice).
E-mail to unknown users      send to Administrator
You can control access to your POP and IMAP servers. The private setting allows access only from your local network(s), and the public setting allows access from anywhere on the Internet.
Hope that can help

[digben]

Thanks for the suggestion but it doesn't help me I'm afraid. The emails I wish to delete are addressed to postmaster@ which is a pseudonym for the admin account. They are not administrative notices or emails to unknown users.

Can anyone help? Please?

[Janm]

Okay sorry for that
Dont you have access to the server with putty
or direct access ?
jan

[Janm]

just a hint from knuddis site

When someone sends email from an non-existing account (usually Spam) to an non-existing account on your SME server you get double bounce messages to your postmaster account. You will receive emails with the text "Hi. This is the qmail-send program at "xxxxxxx". I tried to deliver a bounce message to this address, but the bounce bounced!"

By default such messages are sent to the postmaster account (admin) but can be automatically deleted if you do the following:

 

 

[root@e-smith]# mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/qmail/alias/

[root@e-smith]# touch /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/qmail/alias/.qmail-oblivion

[root@e-smith]# echo "#" > /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/qmail/alias/.qmail-oblivion

[root@e-smith]# mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/qmail/control/

[root@e-smith]# touch /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/qmail/control/doublebounceto

[root@e-smith]# echo "oblivion" > /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/var/qmail/control/doublebounceto

[root@e-smith]# /sbin/e-smith/expand-template /var/qmail/alias/.qmail-oblivion

[root@e-smith]# /sbin/e-smith/expand-template /var/qmail/control/doublebounceto

[root@e-smith]# service qmail restart

[digben]

Thanks for the help Janm. I have direct access to the server but I'm no unix guru. I can't seem to find anything in server manager that will help.

[Janm]

Okay
log in to the server as
root
and admin password
then go  in home/e-smith/Mail or Maildir/junkmail or current or new
then you should se the mails to delete
i dont think admin has a speciel mail account
try that and reply
Jan
Forgot you should use mc to do this

[digben]

I can get to that directory and see all the emails but how do I delete just the admin emails? I'm reluctant to just rm * everything as i don't want to lose other users emails. Or am I being stupid and is this directory only for admin mails? If so, where are the others?

Thanks again for your help, It's much apreciated.

[Janm]

Yes thats the files the admin got back from the annonymous or postmaster
account
the users mails are in
/home/e-smith/files/users/

Jan

[Janm]

Maybe its better you read all the mail before you delete them  
Jan its coffie  plenty off it    (dont drink

other place to look
/var/qmail/queue

warning if you delete somthing its gone
you have no recyclebin

[digben]

Hi Jan,

thanks for all your help. I managed to delete all the offending emails (after quite a bit of difficulty due to the sheer volume of them) and all is working well again. The beers are on me.

Thanks again,

Ben

[raem]

digben

See the tips in

http://mirror.contribs.org/smeserver/contribs//rmitchell/smeserver/howto/Mail%20system%20tweaks%20HOWTO%20for%20sme%20server.htm