[Dovecot] "failed to store into mailbox 'INBOX': Not enough disk space." with large mail

[Stan Hoeppner]

Charles Marcus put forth on 6/21/2010 12:23 PM:
> On 2010-06-21 12:20 AM, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
>> Set in /etc/postfix/main.cf
>>
>> mailbox_size_limit = 0
> 
> That's generally never a good idea (sets it to unlimited). Much better
> to just set it to a sane limit.

That's a purely subjective statement Charles.  mailbox_size_limit is a "poor
man's" disk quota system and was designed strictly to be used by Postfix only
when Postfix is doing local delivery.  Wietse didn't envision this being
active when using an external LDA.

Many (most?) Postfix admins don't even know of its existence until they run
afoul of the default limit of ~50MB.  The "sane" thing to do is implement
proper mailbox size quota management in Dovecot or at the filesystem level as
these methods allow different quotas for different users.

This setting exists in Postfix solely for the case when Postfix is configured
to perform local delivery itself.  When piping delivery to a downstream
application that actually does the disk write, mailbox_size_limit should
always be disabled, so the downstream LDA or filesystem quota engine can do
its job without interference from Postfix.

-- 
Stan