[SOLVED] message size error

[reckless2k2]

This may be some simple fix that I overlooked. I attached a file exceeding a size limit and the email was bounced back with this error:

The e-mail system was unable to deliver the message, but did not report a specific reason.  Check the address and try again.  If it still fails, contact your system administrator.
            < outbound5-blu-R.bigfish.com #5.0.0 X-Postfix; message size 13234677 exceeds size limit 10240000    of server mail.example.com[xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx]>

I emailed a file from my company address to my zimbra box.

Thanks.

[mmorse]

Well there's really nothing wrong with that error, besides being vague in the first line I guess - from the outside your trying to send something of size 13234677 which exceeds your limit of 10240000.

So, you might to set zimbraFileUploadMaxSize 10-30% > than your attachment.
Also as a general rule, I set zimbraMtaMaxMessageSize 10% larger than the zimbraFileUploadMaxSize.

If I understand this right...say both are set to 10MB (and you tell everyone they can send 10MB attachments):
An email with a 9MB attachment and 100KB message body text. The attachment may be less than the 10MB zimbraFileUploadMaxSize, and so it'll get accepted by the file upload system. But when it's converted into a MIME message it ends up base64-encoded. Then add 100K of regular body text, and the resulting message (say 10.3MB or so) is then handed off to postfix, which checks zimbraMtaMaxMessageSize and promptly rejects the message if it's over the limit of 10MB.

Of course that would mean that you would set zimbraMtaMaxMessageSize even larger if you want to allow emails with multiple large attachments.

[reckless2k2]

I kind of leaped before I looked really. I didn't realize that the complete message size with attachments exceeded 10MB. Regardless of settings in Zimbra, I didn't think I could send attachments over a certain size in their original form across the internet anyway.

[mmorse]

Ok, gonna mark the thread as resolved. -Happens to the best of us!

It's simply your limits on server upload & send mixing with what the other side is willing to take the time to receive/process (their corresponding limits).

So if messages sent through SMTP could grow about 10-30 percent because of format conversion (MIME and UUEncode) - then obviously other protocols besides SMTP become much more ideal as your size of the file in question that you want to get from point a>b increases.