[NMLUG] automatic mail delete?

[havoc at harrisdev.com (havoc)]

tanks, pi.

pi wrote:
> havoc wrote:
>> I'm hoping to find a solution that I can have the server blow them 
>> away without ever downloading them from /var/spool/mail/user, which is 
>> a single file.
>>
> 
> Well, mail files are single monolithic files containing all the messages 
> in a full mailbox. If you want to do this, you should use Maildir 
> delivery, which stores each message in a separate file, then use
> 
> find /home/scan/Maildir/{cur,new} -mtime -7 -print0 | xargs -0 rm
> 
> since maildir mail files have funny characters in their name that -exec 
> probably won't like very much.
> 
> However, this requires using mail servers that support maildir format. 
> Postfix definitely does, as does courier-IMAP, so i suggest those.
> 
>> This is for a mailbox I created called "scan" (which is short for 
>> "spam can), which I use for creating accounts on sites I would like to 
>> get information from, but not receive all of their junk mail.
>>
>> j
>>
>> Michael Maddex wrote:
>>
>>> If you are talking about separate user files, you could try something 
>>> like this:
>>>
>>>     # find /var/spool/mail -mtime -X -exec rm {} \;
>>>
>>> where 'X' is your 'X days old' and '\;' is part of the syntax.  You 
>>> can use the
>>> '-i' or '-f' argument to 'rm' if appropriate.  See man find for more 
>>> info.
>>>
>>> Hope this helps.
>>>
>>> havoc said:
>>>
>>>> what command would I run to delete messages older than X days old in my
>>>> mail spool?
>>>>
>>>> thanks,
>>>> jody


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