Clearing /var/spool/mail/root

Reegz · 09-13-2006, 10:25 AM

ok, i've searched the forums and good ol google, but yet an answer eludes me.

i'm trying to set up a cron job that will delete mail in /var/spool/mail/root which is older than a month.

I know that the manual way to do it would be to type

Code:

mail

and then delete it from there. Is there a way in which this process can be automated??

Thanks

kstan · 09-13-2006, 12:01 PM

write a script like this (maybe clearroot.sh)

#!/bin/bash
rm -f /var/spool/mail/root (I assure root is file, if folder then -rf)

save the file in /etc/cron.daily
chmod +x clearroot.sh

everyday ~4am it will clear the file for u

ramram29 · 09-13-2006, 02:09 PM

The post above will delete all the mail. If you want to delete mbox mail that is one month or older then there are severl perl script that can do this for you. I think you can also do it using mutt command line parameters which you can put on a cron script.

Reegz · 09-14-2006, 01:53 AM

Thanks for your reply but thats not what i'm looking to do

Quote:

Originally Posted by kstan

write a script like this (maybe clearroot.sh)

#!/bin/bash
rm -f /var/spool/mail/root (I assure root is file, if folder then -rf)

save the file in /etc/cron.daily
chmod +x clearroot.sh

everyday ~4am it will clear the file for u

ramram29 · 09-14-2006, 09:07 AM

OK, now I remember! It is called mbox-purge.pl - it is a perl script that will allow you to purge old email messages from your mailbox or from a group of mailboxes; all done with a command. I used it years ago for doing the exact same thing while administering mega mailboxes. Below is the link for the project page.

http://freshmeat.net/projects/mboxpu...ease_id=235118

Here's the man page with examples:

http://www.argon.org/~roderick/mbox-purge.html

For further info google "mbox-purge".

You can also do it using webmin, which is very nice and easy to use with a browser.

Reegz · 09-15-2006, 05:07 AM

Cool thanks. I'll have a look at it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ramram29

OK, now I remember! It is called mbox-purge.pl - it is a perl script that will allow you to purge old email messages from your mailbox or from a group of mailboxes; all done with a command. I used it years ago for doing the exact same thing while administering mega mailboxes. Below is the link for the project page.

http://freshmeat.net/projects/mboxpu...ease_id=235118

Here's the man page with examples:

http://www.argon.org/~roderick/mbox-purge.html

For further info google "mbox-purge".

You can also do it using webmin, which is very nice and easy to use with a browser.

Reegz · 09-15-2006, 09:50 AM

The script works brilliantly!!!!