[Dovecot] doveadm search not showing expected results

[btb at bitrate.net]

On Feb 25, 2013, at 01.45, Timo Sirainen <tss at iki.fi> wrote:

> On 25.2.2013, at 4.50, btb at bitrate.net wrote:
> 
>> i'm running doveadm search:
>> 
>>> doveadm search -A mailbox sent savedbefore 365d
>>> 
>> 
>> and it's returning no results.
>> 
>> a similar command does return some results:
>> 
>>> doveadm search -A mailbox sent savedbefore 120d | grep -iF 'jdoe'
>> jdoe 7b9a8b0b7d37504fe72c000055e4fe9a 65
>> jdoe 7b9a8b0b7d37504fe72c000055e4fe9a 66
> ..
>> 
>> however, i see many messages in the sent mailbox much older than 365 days:
> 
> Note that Dovecot has 3 timestamps:
> 
> * sent date : The Date: header
> * received date : In maildir the file's mtime
> * save date : In maildir either in dovecot.index.cache or the file's ctime

thanks, this clarifies things for me.

ultimately, this question comes in the context of expunging messages older [fsvo older, as per the above metrics] than a certain age.  is doveadm expunge [...] generally considered the appropriate method for such a task?  presumably via a cron job?

-ben