/tmp: filesystem full

[Paul Schmehl]

--On Wednesday, December 12, 2007 16:11:24 -0600 Cesar Amaya 
<csar at 123.com.sv> wrote:

>
>> Looks like something, maybe your mail program has a large file open -
>> maybe trying to receive a huge file.   Killing the process could get
>> that file closed and either it would be gone or would finally show
>> how much space it is holding.
>>
>> ////jerry
>>
>>
>
> I even restarted the server but the problem is still there.
> this is what I got every amount of time (not always).
>
> root     mail.local  8987    3 /tmp          4 -rw-------  616886272 rw
>
> I don´t understand why mail.local is gathering a file that big
>
>

Yikes!  Looks like whatever that message is is being retried by the sending 
MTA.  Perhaps you could try deleting the message from the queue.  (I assume 
it will sit in there until delivery is successful.)

I think, if you shut the mail server down and then restart it later, you're 
going to continue to have this problem.  You may have to figure out where 
the message is coming from and try to stop it at the other end.  Possibly 
you could configure your server to reject messages larger than a certain 
size, then restart it and let it reject it rather than trying to receive 
it.  I know you can do that with Postfix.  Don't know about other MTAs.

One thing I would do is stop the mail server, wait a minute or two, and 
then check /tmp.  This would positively confirm that the problem is coming 
from the mail server *if* the problem goes away when the server is stopped.

-- 
Paul Schmehl (pauls at utdallas.edu)
Senior Information Security Analyst
The University of Texas at Dallas
http://www.utdallas.edu/ir/security/