How to deal with a clogged or corrupt email box
Lots of people like to send files via email. Unfortunately, this often
clogs up the recipients mailbox and results in the mail program
checking for a long period of time for messages, then "timing out" or
"can't locate server" error messages. Here are some helpful steps to
try:
Let the computer sit for a long period of time, checking mail.
Sometimes, just a little patience helps, and it will download all
the email.
Telnet into king.halcyon.com and run a mail program on our
server.
We'll focus on the latter part. First, you must know how to Telnet. If not,
click here
first. Windows95 machines have Telnet installed with Win95. Win3.1
users should download a telnet client (ie from www.shareware.com), and Mac users
should have NCSA Telnet on their systems, or can download it from
www.shareware.com.
The next step will be to run Pine. Pine is a mail program that runs right
on our server. It does not download the email to your computer. It
lets you handle your mail box remotely. For information on using
Pine, click
here. Pine lets you delete any message you want, split file
attachments off to your home directory, and even send and receive mail.
If Pine doesn't do the trick, you can try using just Unix Mail. At the
shell prompt: king_1> , type "mail". Give it a moment or so and it will
sort your email out. Type "d #" where # equals the message you want to
delete. To close this program, type Ctrl-D.
Also, to completely delete your spool of mail, just type "rm
/usr/spool/mail/username" where username equals your login/username
(typically the first half of your email address before the @ symbol).
This is the last and final solution. Typically, if you have
50MB or more of email, this is the only solution to the problem.
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