BOGUS.* in /var/spool/mail [was: [tech] Re: [ucc] home is full!!!!]

[Darren Longbottom]

On Mon, 3 Sep 2001, Grahame Bowland wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 03, 2001 at 12:18:06PM +0800, David Manchester wrote:
> > ...and mail.
> > WTF are these? I presume this was the e-mail burp a while back.
> > Can they be culled?
> 
> These probably happen whenever NIS vanishes and mooneye doesn't 
> know about our accounts.

Seems likely.  procmail(1) says - 
  If /var/spool/mail/$LOGNAME is a bogus mailbox (i.e.  does
  not  belong to the recipient, is unwritable, is a symbolic
  link or is a hard link), procmail will upon startup try to
  rename  it into a file starting with `BOGUS.$LOGNAME.' and
  ending in an inode-sequence-code.

That means deleting them may result in lost mail.  They should probably be
merged back into the valid mailboxes, after checking for duplicateness.

 Regards,
owls (: despite random header insistence otherwise :)