How to Manage Postfix Mailbox Size

by lifeLinux on May 15, 2011

How do you managing the mailbox size for users configured with the Postfix mail server ?. And how to avoid “error writing message: File too large” ?

Setup new mailbox size limit

Login as root and type the following command to edit main.cf

vi /etc/postfix/main.cf

Default, the limit for any local mailbox or maildir is 50 MB but, this can easily be changed with by using this directive in the main.cf file.

mailbox_size_limit=102400000

This changes the mailbox limit to 100 MB. Or you can make it umlimited by using a “0”.

mailbox_size_limit=0

Setup new message size limit

Default message size is 1 MB, example changes the message size limit to 2MB. Open file /etc/postfix/main.cf and add/modify/set values as follows

message_size_limit = 2048000

Review the current settings

If you would like to review the current settings on your Postfix server use this command

postconf -d | grep size_limit

Sample outputs

body_checks_size_limit = 51200
bounce_size_limit = 50000
header_size_limit = 102400
mailbox_size_limit = 102400000
message_size_limit = 2048000

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