Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2007 10:20:32 -0500 From: Eric Crist <mnslinky@gmail.com> To: Thierry Lacoste <lacoste@univ-paris12.fr> Cc: Christopher Hilton <chris@vindaloo.com>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: deleting old mails Message-ID: <FDA45067-026B-4A86-8DEE-081B1B9D3699@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <200706031505.04290.lacoste@univ-paris12.fr> References: <200705312221.23108.lacoste@univ-paris12.fr> <4662AD92.8080106@vindaloo.com> <200706031505.04290.lacoste@univ-paris12.fr>
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On Jun 3, 2007, at 8:05 AMJun 3, 2007, Thierry Lacoste wrote: > On Sunday 03 June 2007 14:01, Christopher Hilton wrote: >> Thierry Lacoste wrote: >>> I'm running a postfix server on FreeBSD 6.1 and I'd like to have >>> a cronjob which deletes old mails from mboxes in /var/mail. >>> >>> I tried mail/archivemail but it cannot create it's lock file >>> in /var/mail because it runs as the user owning the mailbox >>> on which it operates. >>> >>> I also tried mail/archmbox but I'm wondering if it is safe >>> to use it while postfix is running. Quoting the manual: >>> >>> A few words about locking. There has been a discussion about >>> archmbox handles file locking. The answer is simple: no mailbox >>> is ever >>> locked. The reason behind this behavior is that I want archmbox >>> to be as >>> least invasive as possible, so other kind of checks are >>> performed to >>> ensure that no data is lost (mailbox has changed/mailbox is in >>> use by >>> another program). I will surely add some locking mechanism in the >>> future. >>> >>> Any help would be appreciated. >> >> Have you consider using Maildir/ format instead? A switch to Maildir/ >> format would allow you to use the "find" program to weed out your >> mailbox and locking is not an issue. > > AFAICS the Maildir/ format implies that mails are delivered to the > home > directory of the users. > On the mail server the home diretory is NFS-mounted read-only just to > be able to see the .forward files. > Users are required to use only pops to read their mail (qpopper is > on the > mail server) and I wanted to avoid unnecessary network traffic: > from the > mail server to the NFS server upon mail receipt and in the other > way when > readind mail with pops. > That's not true. My particular mail system saves to a mail-specific directory, under /usr/local. Not in the user's home directory. If you're worried about disk space, try enabling quotas in your postfix configuration. There's a great postfix how to at www.purplehat.org to help you set all this up. Personally, I don't try to tell users what email they can have, I just limit their space - they'll decide what's important and what's not. However, maildir is the way to go if you want to search for delete certain mail. HTH.
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