Error: Postfix - virtual_mailbox_limit is smaller than message_size_limit

You get the following error in your mail log:

Aug 05 08:10:00 mail postfix/virtual[10486]: fatal: main.cf configuration error: virtual_mailbox_limit is smaller than message_size_limit

Solution

Increase the value of virtual_mailbox_limit. By default, it's set to 51200000 bytes (if you didn't set another value in /etc/postfix/main.cf), as the command

postconf -d | grep virtual_mailbox_limit

shows:

mh1:~# postconf -d | grep virtual_mailbox_limit
 virtual_mailbox_limit = 51200000
 mh1:~#

If you have set another value, the command

postconf -n | grep virtual_mailbox_limit

will show it to you.

Now find out your message_size_limit. If you have set it in your /etc/postfix/main.cf, the command

postconf -n | grep message_size_limit

will show you its value; if you didn't set message_size_limit, the command

postconf -d | grep message_size_limit

will show you its default value.

Now set a new value for virtual_mailbox_limit (bigger than message_size_limit) as follows:

postconf -e 'virtual_mailbox_limit = 102400000'

(Replace 102400000 with a value of your choice.)

As an alternative, you can disable virtual_mailbox_limit by setting it to 0:

postconf -e 'virtual_mailbox_limit = 0'

Finally, restart Postfix:

service postfix restart