[Dovecot] n00b here -- pop email deletion

[Duane Hill]

Sunday, July 10, 2011, 6:45:31 PM, Glenn wrote:

> I'm running Dovecot IMAP and POP3 on Debian. But it look's like
> it's keeping mail in the user's inbox on the server until it's
> deleted by the user. I thought POP servers deleted email as soon as
> it was downloaded, but apparently not, according to dovecot.org.

Is the email client used to read email set to leave mail on the server
for a period of time or indefinitely?

> Is there something in the Dovecot conf I can do to get rid of all this redundant crud?

Recent versions of Dovecot can use doveadm to remove messages off the
server that have the deleted and seen flags set. I'm not sure about
doing the same for earlier versions of Dovecot.

With Dovecot 2.0.12, I have a cron set up to remove messages that are
marked as deleted using:

/usr/local/bin/doveadm expunge -A mailbox '*' deleted

> I see several conversations on the 'Net about "quotas" that look
> like they might keep stuff around for a few days or weeks, then
> delete. That sounds lovely, but I don't understand them enough to try to make it happen.

> dovecot -n:

>> # 1.0.15: /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf
>> log_timestamp: %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S 
>> protocols: imap pop3
>> ssl_listen: *
>> ssl_disable: yes
>> disable_plaintext_auth: no
>> login_dir: /var/run/dovecot/login
>> login_executable(default): /usr/lib/dovecot/imap-login
>> login_executable(imap): /usr/lib/dovecot/imap-login
>> login_executable(pop3): /usr/lib/dovecot/pop3-login
>> login_max_processes_count: 12
>> mail_privileged_group: mail
>> mail_executable(default): /usr/lib/dovecot/imap
>> mail_executable(imap): /usr/lib/dovecot/imap
>> mail_executable(pop3): /usr/lib/dovecot/pop3
>> mail_plugin_dir(default): /usr/lib/dovecot/modules/imap
>> mail_plugin_dir(imap): /usr/lib/dovecot/modules/imap
>> mail_plugin_dir(pop3): /usr/lib/dovecot/modules/pop3
>> pop3_uidl_format(default): 
>> pop3_uidl_format(imap): 
>> pop3_uidl_format(pop3): %08Xu%08Xv
>> auth default:
>>   mechanisms: plain login
>>   passdb:
>>     driver: pam
>>   userdb:
>>     driver: passwd
>>   socket:
>>     type: listen
>>     client:
>>       path: /var/spool/postfix/private/auth
>>       mode: 432
>>       user: postfix
>>       group: postfix

-- 
Best regards,
 Duane                            mailto:duane at duanemail.org