Compacting mailboxes...

[David G Mcmurtrie]

On Thu, 24 Feb 2005, Forrest Aldrich wrote:

> In any case, an issue was brought up whereby if a user doesn't "Compact"
> their mailbox (done via most common MUA's like Thunderbird) the deleted
> messages can linger - for however long.
>
> I've personally seen this before.

The IMAP protocol specifies this (check out RFC 3501).  IMAP utilizes a
two stage delete model.  First a client must set the "Deleted" flag for a
message, then the client must send an expunge command to the server.
Until the expunge command is sent, the messages still exist but they're
marked for deletion.  This isn't cyrus specific, it's how IMAP works.

The behavior you're observing is that when you tell your client to delete
a message it's setting the Deleted flag.  When you tell your client to
compact the folder, it's sending an expunge command.

> I'm concerned about disk space consumption of these messages in-limbo.
> Is there some mechanism that can force a "compact" of the mailbox to
> remove these deleted messages - or is there another method to manage
> this scenario?

I don't know of a server-side way to do what you want.  That doesn't mean
it can't be done, though.  I think what you really need to do is educate
your users.  Clients vary greatly in how they work by default and how they
allow you to configure them.  You should look for a client configuration
option that will always send an expunge whenever a message is deleted.

Thanks,

Dave

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