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Written by Jacques Guellec, jacques.guellec@free.fr. This program is an "emailware". If you use it, please send me a mail.

French version

You can check the validity of the .tar.gz file. My public key is in the source of this document and on any PGP key server. Example: http://pgp.mit.edu/

http://jguellec.free.fr/program/perl/clean_mail/clean_mail_2.60.tar.gz.pgp

You may distribute Clean_Mail under the terms of the artistic license.

What is Clean_Mail ?

Someone asked me in 1997 for a program that can read standard Unix mail files and delete the too old mails. It is an issue occuring on large networks (universities, enterprises, etc) where often users consults their mail by telnet and don't erase it of the server or doesn't consult it at all. These files become enormous and take a lot of space in the mail spool. This soft will works only on Unix systems with standard Perl and sh.

Once again, the best language for that seems to be perl.

Download

clean_mail_2.60.tar.gz (45 ko)

ChangeLog

This software is available on:

Installation

Download the file clean_mail_2.60.tar.gz and uncompress it where you want by a tar zxvf clean_mail_2.60.tar.gz
A directory clean_mail_2.60 is created.

Then add the PATH to Clean_Mail in your environment.

Edit the configuration file "/usr/local/clean_mail_2.60/clean_mail.conf" and set it. Create a backup directory, by default /usr/local/rm_mails_backup.

What does Clean_Mail do ?

If you works with a version earlier than 2.59, you must not run several session of Clean_Mail at the same time. The different parts of the programm communicate with files and it would have impredictable results.
There is now a lock file (clean_mail.lock in /tmp) that avoid risks of data loss.

This software is particularly useful when a lot of users does not erase their mails from the server.
The program can manage backups, optional automatic mails to users, and anti-spam mode.

Configuration

The best way to see all the capabilities of the program is to read the real configuration file that has french / english explanations.

clean_mail.conf

Use

Type clean_mail   path/to/the/MailSpool. If you just type clean_mail, a text remind you the syntax.

Whatever value set for the number of months, all the mails with two years less than the current year, will be erased.

If you wish Clean_Mail to be launched by crontab, you must add in crontab something like:
PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/etc/clean_mail_2.60:/bin:/usr/bin

This is the PATH for the Clean_Mail install directory and for the system commands needed by Clean_Mail:
cp, chown, chgrp, mv, touch and for the "du".



© Lilas - 98 - 99 - 2005