How do I purge a linux mail box with huge number of emails

Question

I have setup some cron jobs and they send the crons result to an email  Now over the months I have accumulated a huge number of emails   Now my question is how can I purge all those emails from my mailbox

User · Answer

Just use   mail d 1-15 quit   Which will delete all messages between number 1 and 15   to delete all  use the d     I just used this myself on ubuntu 12 04 4  and it worked like a charm   For example   eric dev     mail Heirloom Mail version 12 4 7 29 08   Type   for help    var spool mail eric   2 messages 2 new  gt N  1 Cron Daemon           Tue Jul 29 17 43  23 1016   Cron  lt eric ip-10-0-1-51 gt   usr bin php  var www sandbox eric c   N  2 Cron Daemon           Tue Jul 29 17 44  23 1016   Cron  lt eric ip-10-0-1-51 gt   usr bin php  var www sandbox eric c   amp  d    amp  quit   Then check your mail again   eric dev     mail No mail for eric eric dev       What is tripping you up is you are using x or exit to quit which rolls back the changes during that session

User · Answer

Rather than deleting  I think we can nullify the file  because the file will be created if the mail service is still on  Something like following will do the job  cat  dev null  gt  var spool mail tomlinuxusr   And yes  sorry for awakening this old thread but I felt I could contribute

User · Answer

If you re using cyrus sasl imap on your mailserver  then one fast and efficient way to purge everything in a mailbox that is older then number of days specified is to use cyrus imap ipurge command  For example  here is an example removing everything  be carefull     older then 30 days from user vleo  Notice  that you must be logged in as cyrus  imap mail administrator  user     cyrus mailserver      usr lib cyrus-imapd ipurge -f  -d 30 user vleo Working on user vleo    total messages           4 total bytes              113183 Deleted messages         0 Deleted bytes            0 Remaining messages       4 Remaining bytes          113183

User · Answer

On UNIX   Linux   Mac OS X you can copy and override files  can t you  So how about this solution   cp  dev null  var mail root

User · Answer

You can simply delete the  var mail username file to delete all emails for a specific user  Also  emails that are outgoing but have not yet been sent will be stored in  var spool mqueue

User · Answer

One liner   echo  d      mail -N

User · Answer

Rather than use  d   why not  p    I am not sure if the  p    will work   I didn t try that   You can  however use the following script      bin bash    MAIL INDEX   printf  h a nq n    mail   egrep -o   0-9   unread    awk   print  1     markAllRead  for    i 1  i lt   MAIL INDEX  i      do    markAllRead  markAllRead p  i n  done markAllRead  markAllRead q n  printf   markAllRead    mail

User · Answer

alternative way   mail -N d   quit   -N Inhibits the initial display of message headers when reading mail or editing a mail folder  d   delete all mails

[email] How do I purge a linux mail box with huge number of emails?

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