Mail opens, tries to compact messages, then quits.

Question

Howdy,
One other thing of note is that I'm down to approx 3.6 gig of disk space.
I have gone to home/library/Mail/[email protected] and moved the file INBOX.mbox to the desktop (and put it in a folder labeled "Old INBOX"), and then deleted the file MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded.
Next I restarted Mail. It downloaded 50 messages (showing them in the inbox window) while the little spinner spins and the little message window shows "Reading table of contents"; then "compacting message 554 of 558;" at which point it quits and says that I got a compacting error and that the disk may be full.
Now it worked fine when it had less than 3 gig free. What gives?
Also, I know that I have one folder with a lot of pictures in it. Two problems:
I have no earthly idea where to find the attachements (the Pics) so that I can delete them; and my finder does not help.
I tried to find folders based on size (I really only use this for email, web surfing, and itunes. For that reason, I believe that whatever has eaten the 30 odd gig of disk space must have some relation to one of those apps. So, I searched for Kind=folder and Size is greater than 1000000 kb. I got a bunch of folders alright, but nothing bigger than 500 MB, and none of those sorted by size.
I give up, what gives here? Any suggestions? Many thanks in advance,
Bart Chambers

Answer 1

(and put it in a folder labeled "Old INBOX")
Where did you put this "Old INBOX" named folder - in
the Earthlink account named folder? If so, there is
no reason to do so. When moving a .mbox file from
within a POP account named folder (with the Mail.app
quit before doing so), a new .mbox file is created
automatically by Mail within the account named folder
when the function is used by the account - in this
case, a new INBOX.mbox file.
I put it on the desktop, in the (probably futile) expectation that at some point I might be able to reclaim the 800 some-odd messages that were there when the fan got all brown and stinky. I was aware (from reading an older thread on this forum) that a new INBOX.mbox file would be created at the time I started MAIL again.
Next I restarted Mail. It downloaded 50 messages
(showing them
in the inbox window) while the little spinner spins
and the little
message window shows "Reading table of contents";
then
"compacting message 554 of 558;" at which point it
quits and says
that I got a compacting error and that the disk may
be full.
This is obviously not occurring with the new
INBOX.mbox created automatically by Mail within the
account named folder since there aren't 558 messages
available within this mailbox.
Yep, I mentioned that because it indicates to me that something is not entirely kosher. I have no clue why MAIL thinks that there are 558 messages, or that it is compacting #554.
OK, I have a clue, but that's all. I think that those numbers are stored somewhere in some kind of mox-nix scratch file that should have been cleaned out, but for some reason, did not get cleaned out. How could I flush this?
The only way to remove message attachments with all
Mail.app versions prior to Tiger Mail is from within
the Mail.app and accessing the messages with
attachments.
Well, that sure is a bit inconvenient, since Mail seems bound and determined to say hello, and immediately Goodbye without even asking, however insincerely, about my mum's health.
What is the overall size of the Mail folder at Home >
Library > Mail?
If the finder can be believed (the "get info" function anyway), it's 263.4 MB.
The Mail.app alone requires the same amount of free
hard drive space as the overall size of the Mail
folder for general housekeeping duties during use.
Well, that would explain why it continued to work up until space got down to 2 gb, but it would also seem that it ought to work now with 3.3 gb available.
Depending on your hard drive capacity, I would focus
on freeing up more hard drive space.
I would have thought (actually, I did think) that this would be a dandy idea myself. That's why I mentioned my problems using Find (folders =/> 1000000 kb). Even my iTunes folder (home/Music/iTunes/) is only 12.51 gb.
Oh, wait, does iTunes reserve enough (disk) space to equal the actual space consumed?
If push comes to shove, I suppose I could burn a bunch of music CDs and dump the music from iTunes, but that would not be my prefered outcome.
Check this link for information regarding a lack of
adequate free hard drive space with OS X.
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/lackofram.html
And this link for suggestions to free up hard drive
space.
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/freeingspace.html
I shall do that now, thank you very much for your time and courtesy, I sincerely appreciate the help.
Bart Chambers
iBook 1.07 ghz PPC G4, 768 MB DDR   Mac OS X (10.3.9)