[lug] Virtual Mail User - Large Mailbox Scrubbing

[John Hernandez]

Ryan Fligg wrote:
> I have a bit of a problem that is taking WAY too much time out of my day.  I 
> have a virtual user who has over 100,000 messages in his mailbox.  The 
> directory is in maildir format.  I cannot simply su to the username and 
> launch pine/mutt to delete non important messages.  I tried launching 
> squirrelmail but there are too many message for it to handle. 
> 
> Another developer I work with recommended your list and said to ask about 
> using Awk to search and remove message from the maildir store.  I would like 
> to start by removing all messages that have "Undeliverable" in the subject 
> heading.  I was trying to make my way through grep to do this but was not 
> getting far.  If anyone has any ideas, they would be much appreciated.
> 

formail + procmail might be a good combination for this job.

~/.procmailrc would contain something like this:

:0
* !^FROM_MAILER
newmaildir/

then run:

formail -s procmail < oldmaildir

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