total 69840
I am using Mozilla's Thunderbird.

Rootin' around in /root.

I find these files and others.

/root/.thunderbird/default/opqzghja.slt/Mail/Local Folders
/root/.thunderbird/default/opqzghja.slt/Mail/mail.earthlink.net

Below is a copy of one of those files. Notice how large both 'Inbox' and 'Trash' are.
Reading those 2 files tells me that they are listing of all the messages I ever recieved.
My 'Inbox' and 'Trash' show to be empty in the Thunderbird CLI. This tells me that the messages in not deleted, just the pointer is set to NULL.

So my question is there already a program that will remove those 2 files from my hard drive? ( Don't want to reinvent the wheel)

-rw------- 1 root root 150690 Aug 23 16:20 Coco
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4097 Aug 23 16:20 Coco.msf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Aug 23 13:23 Drafts
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1468 Aug 23 13:23 Drafts.msf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 36038573 Aug 23 16:18 Inbox
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2130 Aug 23 16:22 Inbox.msf
-rw------- 1 root root 2738 Aug 23 14:26 Kerry
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1935 Aug 23 14:26 Kerry.msf
-rw------- 1 root root 81964 Aug 23 13:23 Linspire Problems
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3143 Aug 23 14:26 Linspire Problems.msf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2824906 Aug 23 13:23 Sent
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 31727 Aug 23 14:27 Sent.msf
-rw------- 1 root root 33956 Aug 23 14:25 Streaming
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3830 Aug 23 14:26 Streaming.msf
-rw------- 1 root root 464132 Aug 23 13:23 TAMLUG
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1298 Aug 23 14:27 TAMLUG.msf
-rw------- 1 root root 0 Aug 22 22:05 TLDP
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1472 Aug 23 14:26 TLDP.msf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 325087 Aug 23 13:23 Templates
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 14336 Aug 23 13:23 Templates.msf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 23145713 Aug 23 16:20 Trash
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 12530 Aug 23 16:20 Trash.msf
-rw------- 1 root root 7316480 Aug 23 13:23 coco
-rw------- 1 root root 948601 Aug 23 14:16 discuss
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1415 Aug 23 14:26 discuss.msf
-rw------- 1 root root 0 Aug 22 22:43 filterlog.html
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Aug 22 21:25 junklog.html
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1797 Aug 23 14:24 msgFilterRules.dat
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 61 Aug 23 16:17 popstate.dat
-rw------- 1 root root 33789 Aug 23 13:23 survey
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4138 Aug 23 14:27 survey.msf


Is there a paper anywhere describing the structure of these file just in case I have to write a program that reserves a pointer to last message read.

Dave

* bump *

I also noted that my Inbox file is huge (500MB!) whereas when viewed from within Thunderbird it is empty.

Anyone know why these old mails stay in the file?

I am especially concerned with this because I make a daily backup of my laptop using cron and rsync. This shouldn't take too long since only the changed files are copied. However, since the inbox changes daily, those 500 MB have to be send through LAN (which does take quite some time).

Any enlightenment in this matter is appreciated!

Cheers, Leon.

Three comments:

1) not the best idea to use root as default account...

2) the Mailbox files are rather plain-text, somehow standardized "mbox" format. The one w/o etension holds the bodies, the .msf holds an index. A quich intro might be http://www.mozilla.org/start/1.0/faq/mail-news.html#3.8
There should be some docu somewhere, for thunderbird is Open Source...

3) LJSBrokken, try to compact your mailbox from the thunderbird context menu (rigth-click on the folder). This should remove the text stuff according to the index files.

HTH,

Peter

Thanks Peter!

Why isn't this done automatically?

Cheers, Leon.

Leon,

that's what I ask myself since I started using Netscape 4...

Glad if I could help you.

Cheers, Peter

What does it have to do with NS4?

Well, it was the same since then. Mbox format had not changed, and the compress thing was already in NS4 (IIRC).

Cheers,

Peter