Goals
This script purges IMAP mailboxes of old read mail.
Specifications
A mail-group is a set of mails which belong to the same thread. The date of the mail-group is the date of the more recent mail in it. A mail group is read if and all mails in it are read.
This script automates the task to remove read mail-group when they are older than a certain date.
This script use a configuration file that can be found in .config/admin-gallu/archivemail. This file is a ini file containing one section per mailbox group and a general section for mailbox independent settings. Section name for mailbox group are defined as "mailbox-group: group". In this section there is a list of folder prefix which helps to define a set of mailbox out of the list of the IMAP account real mailboxes (as Sent.). If a real mailbox satisfies belongs to two groups, it will be processed one time with the settings of each section matching it.
General settings:
- imap-user: user of the IMAP account
- imap-server: server of the IMAP account
- imap-port: port of the IMAP server
- imap-passwd: password of the IMAP account
Mailbox group settings:
- folders: IMAP folders in which real mailboxes are looked for (, separated)
- duration: days before deleting a mail-group
- delete-unread: delete unread mail-group
- purge-if-empty: destroy mailbox if empty (for empty Sent.*)
- backup-mbox: don't destroy mail-group place them in this mbox
- backup-mbox-compress: activate compression of mailbox
Parameters can also be set using command line, considering that name is the mailbox group section name:
- --configuration file: read configuration file
- --imap-user user: c.f. imap-user
- --imap-server server: c.f. imap-server
- --imap-port port: c.f. imap-port
- --imap-passwd passwd: c.f. imap-passwd
- --folders group folders: c.f. folder
- --duration group duration: c.f. duration
- [--delete-unread|--nodelete-unread] group: c.f. delete-unread
- --purge-if-empty group: c.f. purge-if-empty
- --backup-mbox group file: c.f. backup-mbox
- [--backup-mbox-compress|--nobackup-mbox-compress] group: c.f. backup-mbox-compress
- --dbug, --dry-run, --quiet
Implementation
Library
We use debian package as reference. This is the target system and this is a good base test to know if libraries are used and which one are common.
Base
- Getopt::Long: in perl-base
- Pod::Usage: in perl-modules
- File::Spec: in perl-base
- Carp::Assert: in libcarp-assert-perl
IMAP
API required:
- connect/disconnect to IMAP server
- retrieve a list of all mailbox
- choose a mailbox
- retrieve certain header of each mail
- download/delete mail
- keep mail status
- delete folder
Available packages/libraries:
- libmail-imapclient-perl
- apt-cache rdepends (sarge): ldirectord, libmail-box-perl
- API:
- libnet-imap-perl
- apt-cache rdepends (sarge): webmin-ldap-useradmin
- API:
Mbox
API required:
- open existing mailbox
- create mailbox
- append mail
Gzip
API required:
- create/open/write/close a file compressed
- work with mbox library
Lang: Perl
Status
In progress
