mail logs filling up disk space: why? ok to delete?

Found this thread after searching all over the internet and it solved my problem. I use gmail for business and have several very active accounts. My 250GB hard drive was completely full. I used DaisyDisk to identify the problem, and found two gmail log files: one was 90GB and the other 38GB. In all, over half the hard drive was these log files.

I downloaded Dr. Cleaner, and deleted all logs and cache files. 147GB total. Now I have a working computer again.

Quite amazing, and I was very grateful for your answer. It's the only right answer I was able to find.

Thanks.

Gmail is having trouble with the mac Mail client for quite some time. You know... Gmail = Google.

The Mail logs keep a record of the connection process, they're useful to to diagnose problems, but not so friendly for regular users like Mail Activity window or Connection Doctor.

It's safe to delete those logs. If you have a Time Machine backup, delete them from your user Library so you can check them later just in case to find what's causing the issue (the huge size which is not usual). If you don't have a TM backup, copy them to your desktop, erase all logs from your user Library and reopen Mail app. If it's everything OK, keep at least the most recent and smaller one to later review what's going on.

I'm glad it worked. You're welcome.

Please mark the answer status to green, to see the answer in context.

Best.

Hi, I'm having a very similar trouble but I do not use Gmail. I have several mail accounts, essentially from 2 mail server providers (hosting and registrar companies), most accounts in IMAP but some still in POP.

I'm on a PowerBook pro, retina 15 mid 2012, 2.7 Ghz Intel Core i7, with 750 Gb SSD disk", running OS X Yosemite 10.10.2

Since one week I experience the same problem, disk space filling up without appearant reasons. In the Data/Library/Logs/Mail I have 541 files (!!), some of them very huge. I have deleted a 75 Gb file and another of 13Gb, but I still have files from more than 9Gb (ten file obver 1Gb).

I have changed passwords in my accounts and even to access my hosting proividers. But no changes.

Deleting the huge files in the Logs doesn't seem to affect Mails except the fact that I have to enter all POP / IMAP and SMTP passwords :-(

In the logs, the hugest files are "2015-03-18_IMAPMailboxSyncEngine.log", 2mail.mydomainname-d44f367b-6650-4ddf-9cc6-4fe08822ab6c.txt", "2015-03-21_SocketStreamEvents.log", "137778C8-7690-48F3-877E-48D400322117-mail.mydomainename.txt", and I have plenty like that.

The question is, where the problemn comes from ??

When deleting the log files ... the problem is not solved because it continues to filling it with new logs, again ..

Thank you for your assistance and help.

I have this same problem. I delete all the logs and they fill up again. How did you solve your problem?

Deleting the logs will help.

Something happens and causes the logs to grow.

Mail then periodically tries to zip the logs.

If the logs get too big that zipping will bring the machine to its knees.

There are two issues here as far as I can tell, 1: that the logs grow to a ridiculous size, that is bad and should be prevented. 2: that mail tries to zip them in memory which is just stupid, it should not try to do something that will kill the machine.

So:

stop mail

rm ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Logs/Mail/*.zip

rm ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Logs/Mail/*.log

Also:

Please go to http://bugreport.apple.com/ and file a bug. It will be closed as a duplicate. Creating a duplicate bug report is like voting for a bug to be fixed, the more duplicates there are the higher it should get on the priority list for a fix. We can only hope.