Re: remove old trash from imap, server side

[Daniel Webb <lists@danielwebb.us>]

On Thu, Dec 29, 2005 at 02:47:29PM +0800, Chris Purves wrote:

> I am running courier IMAP using maildirs.  I would like to know what
> is the best way for removing mail from the trash folder that are older
> than six months.
> 
> Is there any functionality built into courier or should I make a cron
> job?  What are others doing?

Not sure how to do it with Courier.

Another possibility if you can shut down courier in the middle of the night
is:

% /etc/init.d/courier stop
% cd Maildir && find . -type f -mtime +180 -exec rm \{\} \;
% /etc/init.d/courier start

(test this first and understand it, because I didn't test it)

That will get *any* file older than 180 days, so if there are non-email files
in the tree, you'll have to get more complicated.

Will that mess up the indices on courier, or will it just rebuild them?  I
accidentally screwed up the indices with Dovecot and it just rebuilt them
without a problem.

I do something similar, except I move old mail to an archive so mutt doesn't
get bogged down with 10,000 messages on some of the lists.  Never had a
problem.