# Inaccurate system error



## joseche (Jun 22, 2013)

I know 7.0-RELEASE is pretty old but this legacy system is still in use while I provision a new one.

Here is the error:


```
~ >uname -a
FreeBSD dev01 7.0-RELEASE FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE #0: Sun Feb 24 19:59:52 UTC 2008     root@logan.cse.buffalo.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  i386

~ >mail

/: write failed, filesystem is full
mail: /tmp

~ >df -hi 
Filesystem                   Size    Used   Avail Capacity iused     ifree %iused  Mounted on
/dev/ad4s1a                  496M    180M    276M    40%    4919     60871    7%   /
devfs                        1.0K    1.0K      0B   100%       0         0  100%   /dev
/dev/ad4s1e                  100G     82G    9.9G    89%  995416  12570534    7%   /usr
/dev/ad4s1d                  3.9G    1.9G    1.6G    54%   22955    518739    4%   /var
```

Any ideas why mail is complaining_?_


----------



## ShelLuser (Jun 22, 2013)

Could be just about anything I'm afraid, you hardly provide us with enough useful information. For example; for all we know the system could be using quota's. Or you could have recently installed another mail program and due to the age of your system it didn't compile cleanly and now you ran into a bug.

Don't mean to be rude but the only liable option here is to upgrade that system, and see what happens next.

It's the main reason why people won't even bother to help out with very outdated systems: any possible problems could be caused by just about anything. Even worse: if it turns out to be a bug then we all have wasted a lot of our time because such bugs won't get fixed anyhow.

As such: upgrade first, then try again.


----------



## joseche (Jun 22, 2013)

I found the problem: root had too many emails and for some reason mail copies the mail file to /tmp, and it was bigger than /tmp so it was failing for that reason.


----------



## wblock@ (Jun 22, 2013)

Somebody has not been reading the daily status mails.  Those can be configured to send to another email address in /etc/mail/aliases.  Probably also have to configure Sendmail, but that's not bad.


----------

