Mail limit

[mist_firefly]

One of our clients is getting emails that his reached his 50MB limit on his email account, but when we look on plesk he's not even close. What can be done, why is this showing as over the limit when it's not and where can I check other than Statistics on Control Panel (is it something that can be hidden?)

Thanks

[faris]

Plesk has no built-in facility to automatically warn when a mailbox has, or is about to, reach its mailbox quota. (that I know of!!!!! I'll be very please if I'm wrong)

It only warns if the account as a whole is about to reach the limit set by the subscription. This includes all mailboxes, website files and (depending on how you set it) statistics and logs and databases etc.

So the first thing to do is check where these emails are coming from. Are they really about email? If so then a third party script is in action. Did you install it? Could it be broken?

** Also remember that any such email quota scripts tend to run at a particular point in time (e.g. 5am). Is it possible that the mailbox was full at that point? e.g. he gets lots of big emails overnight, which then get cleared out when he runs his computer in the morning?

If they are not about email then have a look at /var/www/vhosts/domain.tld and see how much space that's using. then add /var/qmail/mailnames/domain.tld and any databases that might be associated with the domain.

[mist_firefly]

You are right it's not only for emails but about the whole subscription.
But this client only has some emails with us the actual domain is not built so it was strange that he was receiving these emails.
Shouldn't plesk control panel show in the statistics window how much space it is used? Or there are things that are hidden and can only be found through the command line? (just out of curiosity )
Thanks

[faris]

The stats tab (in Plesk 10.4.4 and 11.x) does show you the overall limit and what's being added up.

You control what elements are included in one of the admin sections. This can include log files in /var/www/vhosts/statistics but if there's no website then there won't be anything in there, I don't think.

Try these to start with:
du -h /var/www/vhosts/domain.tld
du -h /var/qmail/mailnames/domain.tld

(is it /mailnames/? please check - don't follow blindly - the right one will be obvious if I'm wrong)

[mist_firefly]

I did tried those.
The question I have: shouldn't the plesk control panel show the correct statistics by going to the statistics tab on the specific domains? Or?

Cause we do have many of these notifications saying resource usage by subscription has exceeded the allotments and a lot of times the plesk control panel shows that they haven't. And I don't know how to fix a problem that I don't see on the system.

Thanks

[faris]

It might be necessary to find out exactly what it is that is causing the limit to be exceeded that isn't being reported in the panel itself before we can progress this any further.

But yes, the bottom line is that Plesk really should show you everything that is being added up to cause the limit to be exceeded when it displays the stats in the panel. It is very confusing for this not to be happening. But if we can find out what exactly it being excluded then we can go from there.

We'll also need a list of what's been ticked and what's not been ticked in Tools & Settings -> (Statistics) Settings of Server Statistics.

So, pick one of the problem domains then:
du -h --max-depth=1 /var/www/vhosts/domain.tld
du -h --max-depth=0 /var/qmail/mailnames/domain.tld
and also let us know how big the database(s) and associated files are for that domain (in /var/lib/mysql I think)

If you intend posting the du -h results here, please remove anything that might identify the domain.

use "man du" for all the options you can play with.

[mist_firefly]

Tools & Settings -> (Statistics) Settings of Server Statistics has everything but the log files and statistic reports. (Does this mean it's not taking them into account when calculating the space?)
On the specific account of the client it doesn't show that he is over the limit but he is receiving the email notifications that it is.

Results for ssh:
du -h --max-depth=1 /var/www/vhosts/domain.tld
14M /var/www/vhosts/domain.tld/statistics
8.0K /var/www/vhosts/domain.tld/private
60K /var/www/vhosts/domain.tld/error_docs
372K /var/www/vhosts/domain.tld/httpsdocs
4.0K /var/www/vhosts/domain.tld/pd
4.0K /var/www/vhosts/domain.tld/subdomains
16K /var/www/vhosts/domain.tld/anon_ftp
12K /var/www/vhosts/domain.tld/cgi-bin
12K /var/www/vhosts/domain.tld/etc
24K /var/www/vhosts/domain.tld/conf
40M /var/www/vhosts/domain.tld/httpdocs
4.0K /var/www/vhosts/domain.tld/web_users
764K /var/www/vhosts/domain.tld/vault_scripts
55M /var/www/vhosts/domain.tld


du -h --max-depth=0 /var/qmail/mailnames/domain.tld

37M /var/qmail/mailnames/domain.tld


This is not the first client who it is happening too. Shouldn't the emails be sent only when the usage is shown as over the limit in the control panel too? Or email notification and statistic on control panel are calculated in different ways ?

Thanks

[prupert]

Tools & Settings -> (Statistics) Settings of Server Statistics has everything but the log files and statistic reports. (Does this mean it's not taking them into account when calculating the space?)
On the specific account of the client it doesn't show that he is over the limit but he is receiving the email notifications that it is.

What is the Statistics tab telling you?

If I read your posts correctly you indicate that the client has a 50 MB disk limit set. According to the 'du' output you quoted the usage is about 11 MB for log files, 43 MB for website files and 37 MB for mail accounts. So, yes, the client is apparently going well over it's limit. Also take into account database usage (/var/lib/mysql, also take into account InnoDB tables of which the data is not stored in the database folder) and logs & statistics for additional (sub)domains within the same Subscription, those reside each in another subdirectory of /var/www/vhosts.

This is not the first client who it is happening too. Shouldn't the emails be sent only when the usage is shown as over the limit in the control panel too? Or email notification and statistic on control panel are calculated in different ways ?

Plesk calculates statistics about disk usage and uses those exact same calculated statistics to send out notifications. It does these calculations each night. It does not update the usage statistics during the day.

[mist_firefly]

Ok thank you for your reply, I did saw that when added up it goes over the limit which in this case is 80 but was wondering why on the control panel the disk space shows only as 53MB out of 80 if it is clearly more?

What could the client do in cases like this? Should we delete log files ? Is there any unnecessary files that pile up that can be removed?

Thanks again

[BruceLee]

I was wondering in the past what is summed up in the strange calculation of Plesk.
I think it's somehow cascading the stuff and some not and I decided to set the values as I think.
Alarms almost never occure but thats really based on the clients we have.

Anyway...why I'm posting is that I havent read anything about what you have set as a Mailbox quota setting in the domain limits/seetings.
Have you set that up too low than any and for example the mailbox has a lmit of 50MB and yours is full up to 37MB than a new mail with 50MB will not be stored.

[prupert]

Ok thank you for your reply, I did saw that when added up it goes over the limit which in this case is 80 but was wondering why on the control panel the disk space shows only as 53MB out of 80 if it is clearly more?

The difference in calculations between yours and Plesk's could be due to:
* The data size has changed since the last time Plesk calculated the statistics.
* You are counting a different set of data than Plesk, i.e. you have configured Plesk to omit logs & statistics for disk usage calculations.
* It is known that there have been bugs in Plesk's disk usage statistics calculations from time to time, however there are none that I am aware of now in the latest Plesk 11 version.

What could the client do in cases like this? Should we delete log files ? Is there any unnecessary files that pile up that can be removed?

50 MB is IMHO a severely strict limit for a Subscription with a website and mail accounts. However, what the client should do in case he/she goes over the limit you have configured is completely up to you and the client! If you want to get below the 50 MB limit, than yes, you should logically have to remove some of the data that counts up to the disk usage.

Anyway...why I'm posting is that I havent read anything about what you have set as a Mailbox quota setting in the domain limits/seetings.
Have you set that up too low than any and for example the mailbox has a lmit of 50MB and yours is full up to 37MB than a new mail with 50MB will not be stored.

I think the thread title is a little bit confusing as mist_firefly appears not to be talking about a mailbox quota, but about a Subscription-level disk usage limit. Which is not a "hard" disk limit by the way.