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This document is designed to help those individuals who cannot migrate to
the Mail@umd e-mail system because there is an indication that they may
have too much e-mail in their primary e-mail account, which is on the
Glue/Deans system.
Because Glue/Deans accounts can contain files other than mail files (for
example, Glue/Deans accounts can store web page files or files created on
a OIT Computer Lab computer), the key to dealing with a potential e-mail space
problem is to determine if the space in your Glue/Deans account is being
taken up by your e-mail or by these other files. Use the steps below to
determine how much space your e-mail folders and messages actually use.
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First, connect to your Glue/Deans account using a SSH client (if
you have never used a SSH client, please refer to the Office of Information Technology (OIT)
Help Desk web page on terminal
applications.
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Once you have entered your Glue/Deans username and password, and have read
or skipped over any news items posted on the Glue/Deans system, you will
see a command prompt, which will look similar to this:
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At the command prompt, type:
cd /mail/{userid}
...where {userid} is your Glue/Deans username. Hit the Enter or
Return key on your keyboard to run the command. This will move you out
of the home directory of your account and into the
mail directory of your account, where your e-mail
Inbox resides.
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Now type in the following command:
du -sk
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After a moment or two, you will see a single number listed in the line
below the command you just entered (as in the example below). That
number denotes how much space your e-mail Inbox and any other e-mail
folders stored in the mail directory are using,
measured in kilobytes (kb). In the example below, the
mail directory is just over 9,000 kilobytes (kb), or 9
megabytes (MB), in size.:
Write down that number for your mail directory and put it
aside for the moment.
At the command prompt, type cd home to return to your home
directory, then type:
ls -la | more
The ls command you just entered will list all of the files in
your home directory one screen
at a time (hitting the spacebar will move you to the next screen of
information). The names of the files are listed in the last column of
information. In that last column, look for the names of any e-mail
folders you have in your account. When you find one, write down the
amount of space that e-mail folder takes up, which is the number in the
5th column of information. Unlike before, the amount of space is recorded
in bytes, not kilobytes. In the example below,
the Drafts e-mail folder takes up 11.5 million bytes, or
approximately 11.5 megabytes (MB) or 115,000 kilobytes (kb).
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Continue to look through the list of files, writing down the name of each
mail folder you find and the amount of space it takes up. If you're not
sure that you remember the names of all of your e-mail folders, you can
open up whatever program you use to check for e-mail and use that as a
guide.
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When you are finished, add up all the numbers you just recorded, then
divide the total by 1,000 to determine approximately how many kilobytes
those e-mail folders are using in your account (technically, there are
1,024 bytes in each kilobyte, so if you want to be very precise, divide
the sum of the sizes of the e-mail folders by 1,024 instead of 1,000):
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Now, take the result you get and add that to the number you recorded
for your mail directory in step 6:
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The final number should tell you approximately how much disk space your
e-mail folders and messages occupy.
If you are a faculty/staff member,
and that final number is close to or over 200 MB (200,000
kilobytes), then
you must reduce the amount of e-mail in your account before you
can migrate over to the Mail@umd system (some suggestions for reducing
your e-mail are described in the following paragraphs). If the final
number is lower than 200 MB, then you should be able to migrate over to
the Mail@umd e-mail system without any problems, and you were restricted
from doing so only because the additional files in your account (document
files, web pages, images files, etc) made it look like you had too much
e-mail. To get the restriction removed, contact a member of the Mail@umd
migration team assigned to your department or college for assistance. If
you do not know who the members of the Mail@umd migration team are, then
contact your departmental techincal support staff, who should be able to
provide you with that information.
If you are a student, and that final number is close to or over
100
MB (100,000 kilobytes), then
you must reduce the amount of e-mail in your account before you
can migrate over to the Mail@umd system (some suggestions for reducing
your e-mail are described in the following paragraphs). If the final
number is lower than 100 MB, then you should be able to migrate over to
the Mail@umd e-mail system without any problems, and you were restricted
from doing so only because the additional files in your account (document
files, web pages, images files, etc) made it look like you had too much
e-mail. To get the restriction removed, contact the OIT Help Desk.
If you do have too much e-mail, there are a couple of different approaches
you can use to reduce the amount of your e-mail. One way to reduce your
e-mail is to delete e-mail messages that you no longer need, especially
messages that contain file attachments that have already been saved to
your hard drive or are no longer needed (e-mail messages containing file
attachments or web pages are much larger than messages that contain only
text, and therefore take up more space).
Another way to reduce the amount of e-mail in your e-mail account is to
move some of your e-mail to mail folders on your hard drive. You can use
a graphical e-mail client to accomplish this. Instructions on how to
relocate e-mail to your hard drive can be found on the OIT Help Desk web
page on transferring
excess e-mail to your hard drive prior to migrating to Mail@umd.
Once you think you have deleted enough e-mail, run through the steps on
this web page again to see if the final size amount of your e-mail is
below 200 MB (for faculty/staff) or 100 MB (for students).
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