Mail quotas ? Solution Needed !

[Quanntum]

If I browse the forum it appears that everyone is experiencing the same problem.
Assigning a user a mailbox of 20 MB ends up in a mess with a full mailbox and several other folders of junk, trash totalling a lot more.

An example: a client with a gig of space and some 100 emailaddresses. All users get a mailbox of 10 MB and still problems arise with a few users. Some end up with a mailbox of up to 30 MB (!).
Furthermore, when the total quota is exceeded, inboxes seem to disappear and end up empty (they use Neomail).

I cant believe that all people using Cpanel (and paying for it) just say to their clients "oh mailquota - which in my opinion is some basic aspect of webhosting - arent working. Why? I dont know, Cpanel neither. It appears that only your inbox is covered by it." Weird, I think so ...

Isnt there anyone who has got a solution for this problem. Cpanel hasnt got one (yet). Perhaps another program? another config? another control panel?
Solution needed really quick ;-) And thanks for all your patience with Cpanel :-)))

[chirpy]

Since the change away from hardlinked inboxes (which was the main cause of problems) many months ago, I've never seen any quota issues with mailboxes that weren't the users fault.

It's not clear from your explanation exactly what the problem is that you are seeing. If a user creates a webmail account and leaves email in it, it's obviously going to be taken out of their mailbox quota. or are you saying that they're being allowed to go over quota and that's the problem?

If that's the case then it's more likely a bug in the webmail application since the quotas are not disk based, but software based, and the web applications are mostly out of cPanels control.

If you have a reporducable problem, you should log it with cPanel for them to investigate.

[Quanntum]

Well to be more specific, some users lost their inboxes a few times. This is the case when the maximum quota of the account is reached.
Their inbox (when checked in their file manager) is replaced with a file named __db.INBOX.db. Their addressbook suddenly empty (0k);all data gone.

The problem of the max quota reached, is a direct consequence of mailboxes which are totalling a lot more than the wanted 10 MB. Can you tell me that all inbox, sent and trash data is counted nowadays?
I'm using WHM 9.9.8 and cPanel 9.9.8-R119. Cant imagine that it would be outdated.

So I remain with two problems:
* inboxes suddenly overwritten
* total quota of a mailbox isnt defined.

Hope to get a crystalclear answer ;-)

[chirpy]

As I said, it may be an issue with the webmail clients - I would suggest that you log a bugzilla entry or a support ticket and have them investigate it for you.

[bking]

I myself have seen users that are using more than their alloted quota.

For example, a user has 10meg quota. cPanel, in the email admin section for pop accounts shows their disk usage as 30meg. I ssh in and du -sh blah/ on their mailbox folder, and it is infact 30meg.
I look inside and the inbox file is 2.5meg. They have many other folders (files) inside their mail directory which add up to the 30meg.

So, quotas are only being counted on the 'inbox' file within their mailbox directory, and even though this user is using 30meg of space and they are allocated 10, mail continues to be received.

Can anyone else confirm only the inbox file forms the quota?

[jack01]

Hi Folks,

I am yet another frustrated WHM/cPanel user who is seeing this mailbox quota problem. For your information there is an entry in Bugzilla at http://bugzilla.cpanel.net/show_bug.cgi?id=845 which appears to confirm what you say, bking.

I am still waiting for a proper response from a support ticket about this problem.... Let's keep our fingers crossed.

[tanfwc]

hai...just got a customer complain about this problem...

[NNNils]

From my experience I can conclude that only the inbox folder is counted indeed

[DigitalN]

Some issues that I know of that affect email accounts regarding quota

1. If the total disk space for an account is used up and a user logs in to add an email account, change a password or removes mail in webmail, you end up with an 0 byte file, as the file can not be rewritten back to disk if the account quota is exceeded.

A solution could be that cPanel disallows such edits when an account uses it disk quota up.

2. /etc/quota.conf gets messed up with multiple entries per user. The first entry is used, so if an account quota has been modified from 50MB to 100MB and the original 50MB entry comes first, then mail will be bounced if the account is over 50MB, even though the 100MB entry may be further down the file. Manually editing required to fix.

[equens]

I think the problem is that users only have the limit in their inbox. I think the real problem is that you can limit the inbox to 10 MB but if user archives his email in folders, he can use 100 or 200 MB instead of his limit to 10 MB. What can I do to limit the real space used by email?

[jack01]

equens,

It sadly looks as though we have to live with this 'BUG' until they update the mail quota system used in cPanel. See the link above referring to bugzilla, this was updated recently by a cPanel coder.

I for one am really surprised that what is to my mind a serious flaw has been treated for months as a minor issue...anyway....lets hope they fix it pronto

[jack01]

By the way, anyone wishing to help move this fix along should probably visit http://bugzilla.cpanel.net/show_bug.cgi?id=845 and vote for this bug.

Here's hoping..

[equens]

------- Additional Comment #3 From Clifford Pearson 2005-04-15 13:48 -------

At this time this is the current design of the mail quota system. At a later
date this may be changed.

the mail quota data is not real, it is not working properly, if cpanel wishes to maintain this system, they would have to offer other solution to limit space used out of inbox archive.

[jack01]

equens,

Can you please clarify your point, I'm not sure what you mean, are you saying you don't think they will ever fix it??

[equens]

Yes I think they will not fix it at the moment.