expunging all mailboxes

[Tom Talpey]

On 12/30/2016 11:03 AM, Michael Fox wrote:
>> doveadm expunge -u <user> mailbox '*' savedbefore 30d
>
> That doesn't work for me either.  The command is accepted, but the messages
> are not expunged.

Huh, it certainly did for me, although I used "all" instead of
"savedbefore 30d" since I just wanted to empty the trash. What
version of Dovecot? Mine is 2.2.27.

>> Are you sure you really want to do this? My server expunges Trash and
>> Junk on a cycle, but reaching into other mailboxes seems iffy.
>
> Yes.  I understand it's unusual.  This is an RF (radio) application for
> emergency services.  We have to be efficient about channel utilization.
> Users know they need to keep their mailboxes clean so that, at the start of
> an emergency (or other incident), the channel is not clogged with
> downloading lots of old, irrelevant mail.  If they haven't logged in for a
> while, we'll keep it clear for them.

I guess that's reasonable for a critical application, but normally I
would expect an IMAP client to request headers-only, or just recent
messages. My phone's K9 client defaults to something like 2 weeks.

Tom.