Mail System Internal Data

[chaumess]

I'm a new user of total choice. In the last two days, three separate emails from Mail System Internal Data have shown up in my inbox. I have not deleted any of them, and in fact I have my email client set to leave copies of all my POP messages on the server. Can anyone explain why I keep getting these, and what I can do to make them go away?

 

Thanks!

[Lianna]

When does this happen? Could you paste the contents of one of the mails here so we can see?

 

Thanks.

Lianna

[chaumess]

The weird thing is that as soon as a new copy of this message comes through, the old copy is deleted from the server (my email client shows me whether a copy is currently stored on the server or not). This does not happen with any other emails, and I've now received three of these just this morning!

 

 

------------

Date: 06 Feb 2003 13:50:25 -0500

From: Mail System Internal Data <MAILER-DAEMON@server11.totalchoicehosting.com>

Subject: DON'T DELETE THIS MESSAGE -- FOLDER INTERNAL DATA

Message-ID: <1044557425@server11.totalchoicehosting.com>

X-IMAP: 1044470932 0000000007

Status: RO

 

 

This text is part of the internal format of your mail folder, and is not

a real message. It is created automatically by the mail system software.

If deleted, important folder data will be lost, and it will be re-created

with the data reset to initial values.

[KevinW]

I have one customer on TCH that received this same email message. I believe you can safely delete the message from your inbox. I was told that it might show up if you were trying to create an IMAP connection (rather than a POP3 or SMTP connection) to the maiul server.

 

In my case, my customer happened to have been having some email problems due to configuring their Outlook wrong.

 

Bottom line, it should be a one time occurrence. But you may need to go up to your email account (via web mail) on your server and clean those particular emails out from the inbox.

 

But, pray tell, why would you be setting the option to leave email up on the server for? Emails that stay on your server count against the amount of disk space you have available.

 

-kw

[chaumess]

I like to keep things on the server so that I can read my mail from multiple locations using webmail. Why else would someone want to leave their messages on the server?

[chaumess]

And - emails don't take up a significant amount of space if you remove attachments. One can save thousands and thousands of 4k email messages without using a significant amount of disk space.

[KevinW]

You asked "Why would anyone want to keep email on a server"?

 

Answer: I have several customers I routinely visit and provide support. When I am at one of these sites, I usually have a workstation available to me, and I generally configure Outlook or Outlook Express with my personal or business email address so that I can still conduct business and reply to other people when I am not in my office.

 

In these cases, I would configure the email client at these sites to "leave my mail at the server".

 

That way, when I get back to my office and open up my email, it will all get downloaded again from the server. And here is where I hdo NOT have it marked as "leave on the server".

 

Now, I would suggest (my opinion only) that leaving email on your web server for long term archival is NOT good practice or policy. That is why most web servers will limit the amount of email that can be held.

 

-kw