Reducing disk space use in Pine

The following instructions are written to help individuals who work with Pine email use the program to reduce the disk space used by their email messages.

  1. To check how much disk space your account is using overall, log in to your UDelNet account the way you normally do using the Secure Shell (SSH) application.

    (If you do not have a copy of this program on your computer, you can download a free copy for a Windows computer. For a Macintosh computer, you can use the "Terminal" program located in the Applications folder > Utilities folder > Terminal of your Macinsoh computer.)

  2. To check where in your account the most disk space is being used within your email folders, at the copland.udel.edu (%) prompt, type du -ak | sort -n NOTE
    The | character is usually located on the key above the ENTER key.
     
  3. Press ENTER. You will see a list that looks similar to the following:

    4. copland[3]% du -ak | sort -n
    2      ./.cshrc 5      ./mail/work
    10     ./mail/class1
    15     ./mail/read-mail
    15     ./mail/family
    16     ./mail/saved-messages
    85     ./mail/sent-mail
    216    ./mail/class2
    362    ./mail
    1245   ./pictures
    1971   ./

    • The number in the left-most column indicates the size (amount of disk space used) of the file or folder. The files or folders at the bottom of the list are the largest. 
    • The name of the file or folder appears on the right. Write down the names of the last 4 or 5 folders.
    • The last number (preceding the ./) is the total amount of disk space being used.
    • Files that appear in the mail subdirectory (e.g., ./mail/class1) are folders you created within your email program.
       
  4. Log in to Pine as you normally do.
  5. Access the email folders that you determined were the largest (from steps 2 and 3 above).
  6. Delete messages you don't need.
  7. Press Q to exit Pine Mail.
  8. Recheck your disk space use. At the copland.udel.edu (%) prompt, type quota -v
  9. If your account is now under its disk quota limit, you can stop at this step. If it still exceeds its disk quota limit, work through steps 4-9 until your disk quota is below its limit.
  10. When your account is below its disk quota limit, at the copland.udel.edu (%) prompt, type
    11. exit
  11. Press ENTER.
  12. Close any windows you no longer need.