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Date:      Tue, 27 Oct 1998 20:00:10 -0500 (EST)
From:      <ratbert@phoenix.aye.net>
To:        Scott Lambert <lambert@csw.net>
Cc:        freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Expiring old mail?
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.3.96.981027194420.29618A-100000@phoenix.aye.net>
In-Reply-To: <19981026185229.A386@csw.net>

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On Mon, 26 Oct 1998, Scott Lambert wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I recently ran into a problem with my mail server.  The /var/mail disk filled
> up. (not good)
> 
> Anyway after several hours of "mail -f username" and deleting 7 month-old un-
> read messages and > 1 month-old read messages, I freed up approximately 700MB
> of disk.  (Why do people subscribe to every mailing list on the planet and 
> not read their mail?) 
> 
> We have approximately 9,000 e-mail accounts on our mail server.  Is there an 
> "expire" like tool for the mail spool files?  I would like to be able to
> setup rules such as "any un-read mail more than 2 months old gets deleted" 
> and "any read mail more than 1 month old gets deleted."  That should give our
> users enough time to get their mail onto all the machines they may want.  It
> will also allow someone to be out of town for up to 7 weeks without losing
> any e-mail.  Perhaps unread of 3.5 months would be better to allow for summer
> vacation.
> 
> Thanks for any suggestions,
> 
> Scott Lambert
> Mail, News, and Shell Administrator
> 
> To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
> with "unsubscribe freebsd-isp" in the body of the message
> 


Qmail (http://www.qmail.org) using its Maildir format works for me.
Uses a directory structure per mail user (don't have to be real
users) like $HOME/Maildir/{new,cur,tmp}. Each message is in an
individual file. New messages in Maildir/new, and if the pop
client chooses to leave messages on the server they are migrated
to Maildir/cur after they are read. Mbox format is also supported
and allows you to use other pop servers. The Maildir format
(to my knowledge) only works with the qmail popper. Sure took
a load off our server with customers that never delete their
mail and check for new mail every 60 seconds. If I want to delete
read messages that are more than 90 days old, I just delete files
that are 90+ days old in Maildir/cur. 

--

Barrett


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