[Dovecot] Scheduled folder purging

[Timo Sirainen]

On Feb 19, 2008, at 12:21 AM, Bruce Bodger wrote:

>> As far as I can tell, the expire plugin does not require a cron job  
>> to do its thing...
>
> Guess we'll need some clarification from Timo, Charles, because the  
> 1.1.beta16 dovecot-example.conf states...
>
> # Expire plugin. Mails are expunged from mailboxes after being there  
> the
> # configurable time. The first expiration date for each mailbox is  
> stored in
> # a dictionary so it can be quickly determined which mailboxes contain
> # expired mails. The actual expunging is done in a nightly cronjob,  
> which
> # you must set up:
> # dovecot --exec-mail ext /usr/libexec/dovecot/expire-tool
> #expire = Trash 7 Spam 30
> #expire_dict = db:/var/lib/dovecot/expire.db
>
> Also, the above instructions are also a tad confusing.  It seems  
> like the plugin runs at a system level so how to define mailboxes at  
> the user level?  (what should that "expire" line be?)

In dovecot.conf the mailboxes are defined globally. So in the example  
Trash and Spam mailboxes match all users' Trash and Spam mailboxes. If  
you want to have per-user expire lines, you can do it by overriding  
the expire setting from userdb, in the same was as per-user quota is  
configured.

The expire plugin itsels just keeps track of messages in those  
mailboxes. It doesn't ever actually expunge anything itself.

> P.S. One more thing...  He sure doesn't help things by using the  
> word "expunge" in a paragraph that defines the expire plugin. I'd  
> much prefer the definition read something like this:
>
> # Expire plugin. Mails are MARKED FOR DELETION from mailboxes after  
> being there the

But that's wrong. "Marked for deletion" means adding a \Deleted flag  
for a message. expire-tool really does expunge the messages permanently.

I've been thinking more about reducing commenting in dovecot- 
example.conf and just point to wiki page which can explain things in  
more words. Maybe I'll do that before v1.1.rc1 :)
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