Dovecot autoexpunge

[Philip Colmer]

Following a previous suggestion I'd received to turn on autoexpunge
(https://dovecot.org/pipermail/dovecot/2020-February/118281.html), I'm
now trying to confirm whether or not it is doing what I expect it to
do.

I've set the expiration to be 12 weeks (as shown below in the config)
but a lot of the mailboxes have email in them that is much older.

Reading http://dovecot.2317879.n4.nabble.com/Dovecot-2-2-20-autoexpunge-td54644.html,
I've tried using "doveadm search -u user mailbox INBOX savedbefore 2w"
to see if it finds any email that is older than 2 weeks (just as a
test) and it doesn't.

If I change "savedbefore" to be "sentbefore" then it works.

If "autoexpunge" is dependent on "savedbefore" working then what do I
need to do to fix this?

Thanks.

Regards

Philip

Below is the output of doveconf -n:

# 2.2.33.2 (d6601f4ec): /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf
# Pigeonhole version 0.4.21 (92477967)
# OS: Linux 4.15.0-1041-aws x86_64 Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS
auth_username_format = %Ln
auth_verbose = yes
disable_plaintext_auth = no
listen = 127.0.0.1
mail_location = mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/mail/%u
mail_privileged_group = mail
mailbox_list_index = yes
namespace inbox {
inbox = yes
location =
mailbox Drafts {
special_use = \Drafts
}
mailbox INBOX {
autoexpunge = 12 weeks
}
mailbox Junk {
special_use = \Junk
}
mailbox Sent {
special_use = \Sent
}
mailbox "Sent Messages" {
special_use = \Sent
}
mailbox Trash {
special_use = \Trash
}
prefix =
}
passdb {
driver = pam
}
protocols = " imap lmtp"
service lmtp {
unix_listener /var/spool/postfix/private/dovecot-lmtp {
group = postfix
mode = 0600
user = postfix
}
}
ssl = no
ssl_cert = </etc/dovecot/private/dovecot.pem
ssl_client_ca_dir = /etc/ssl/certs
ssl_key = # hidden, use -P to show it
userdb {
driver = passwd
}