Remember how I said I liked L2?

[wxgeek.livejournal.com]

...I now hate L2.

Request: customer #[number]has so much e-mail in his inbox that he can't delete any of it. I suspect this is because it's trying to move the e-mail to the deleted items folder before it removes it from his inbox. help?
[5:31 PM] [L2]: are you able to delete?
[5:31 PM] [me]: not at all.
[5:31 PM] [me]: nothing.
[5:31 PM] [me]: he's using 102.7mb of his 100mb limit.
[5:31 PM] [me]: and it fails wiiiiiiiiiiiith.......
[5:31 PM] [L2]: awesome
[5:31 PM] [L2]: :-)

[5:31 PM] [me]: oh I know!!!
[5:32 PM] [me]: "There was an error deleting messages from the folder "sent-mail". This is what the server said: UID COPY failed: copy would exceed quota"
[5:32 PM] [L2]: you may have to contact [retarded_3rd_party_mail_service] to help you out
[5:32 PM] [me]: $10 says that 'delete' means 'copy to deleted items and remove from this folder' except it fails at doing that because .... yeah.
[5:32 PM] [me]: aieee.]
[5:32 PM] [L2]: you could try telnetting in and deleting the larger emails
[5:32 PM] [me]: [retarded_3rd_party_mail_service] is scary. :D
[5:32 PM] [L2]: [retarded_3rd_party_mail_service] is incompetent
[5:32 PM] [L2]: :-D
[5:32 PM] [me]: that too.
[5:32 PM] [me]: :)
[5:33 PM] [L2]: have fun storming the castle!
SESSION ENDED

===

managing e-mail via telnet is retarded.

I've been on hold waiting to speak with [retarded_3rd_party_email_service] for ... *looks at phone* 20+ minutes now.

how did this guy even exceed his quota??? shouldn't sendmail have just bounced his stuff??? (Extra ???s because of the Monster I just finished, as well as frustration.)

Comments

[twitchfetish.livejournal.com]

dude can i yoink that userpic?

and if so, credit to who?

T

[wxgeek.livejournal.com]

Yes, and I have no idea. =)

[twitchfetish.livejournal.com]

danke :)

T

[spacebird.livejournal.com]

How is that L2's fault? Isn't it more [retarded_3rd_party_mail_service]'s fault?

[adamjaskie.livejournal.com]

I've helped users with this problem on the University-branded Squirrelmail install that MTU uses. *stab*

[wxgeek.livejournal.com]

oh, TOTALLY their fault. not the L2's at all. but they still left me with "Have fun storming the castle!" heh.

[wxgeek.livejournal.com]

yeah, it's stupid. I just moved it from 'moved deleted items to trash' to 'delete permanently'.

[spacebird.livejournal.com]

haha, yeah.

As an ex-L2, I find that reply both appropriate and hilarious. ;)

[tjernobyl.livejournal.com]

The recipient's SMTP server is unaware of the size of the message until it's already been transmitted. Unless the server kills the connection partway through (icky), rejects it after it recieves it but before the connection is closed (iffy), or bounces back the message itself (icky), it's stuck with it. It can't discard it without super-icky dataloss, so the route most MTAs follow is stuff it in the box regardless of quota and stop accepting more.

Back when this was a more common problem, we had a utility that would login via POP3 and allow one to delete messages that way.

[wxgeek.livejournal.com]

....in the all-sacred quest to never lose a single e-mail, I suppose.

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

Unless they're using a modern system and the sender uses a "message size" parameter in ESMTP and the MTA knows about the mailbox quotas and can reject the overquota message. I'm amazed at how many people don't manage to set this kind of thing up.

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

Of course, even those steps don't mean that over-quota never happens. :-/

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

The Princess Bride reference made me laugh :)

Depending on how hamstrung they are by politics, contracts and scope, it may have been about the only thing L2 could have done. At least they had a sense of humor about it.

Depending on what the local management's like, is there any chance that a request to have L2 given the ability to do something about these issues directly is likely to bear any fruit?

[wxgeek.livejournal.com]

[retarded_3rd_party_email_provider] sucks badly enough so that I'd be stunned if they had a competent sendmail admin between the lot of them.

On the other hand, competence in sendmail requires a pact with the devil, so...

[wxgeek.livejournal.com]

Oh, no, no they were definitely just hampered by the fact that [retarded_3rd_party_email_provider] is just retarded, and third party. There's nothing they could have done, technically, practically, realistically (...ecumenically...)...

[lightforce.livejournal.com]

You can use Telnet to connect to the mail server? Isn't that a bit of a security risk?

[wxgeek.livejournal.com]

specifically you can use the program telnet to open a connection to either the incoming or outgoing mail port. =) it's a lovely way to determine remotely whether outlook is refusing to send mail because it's broken, or because the pc can't connect out on port 25/110.

no, I can't just telnet into our mail servers and pull up a terminal. =)

[jimbojones.livejournal.com]

Use a telnet client to connect to port 110, and speak POP to it. Or telnet to port 143 and speak IMAP to it. Or telnet to port 25 and speak SMTP to it.

EVERYBODY who calls themselves any kind of mail server admin should be able to speak those three protocols. That's kind of the whole point in having them human-readable to begin with, instead of (much more bandwidth-efficient) bytecode.

[lightforce.livejournal.com]

Oh, okay. I was imagining somebody pulling up a terminal with a privileged user account over telnet, which is a Bad Thing.

I never knew you could do that with telnet. That's pretty slick!

[geekgrrl-ca.livejournal.com]

there's a few utilities out there that give you a simple interface to do this. Is neat.

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

...grammatically...

[tjernobyl.livejournal.com]

I must say, it's a relief in my job that when a message goes missing, before doing any research, I can say I'm 95% sure it was either eaten by Outlook, Norton, Hotmail, or some unholy combination thereof.

[tjernobyl.livejournal.com]

The infrequency of it being set up is why we can't count on it :)