expunge_days and cyr_expire

[Bron Gondwana]

On Fri, Jan 06, 2012 at 07:36:15AM -0500, Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
> On Fri, 2012-01-06 at 10:22 +0100, Sebastian Hagedorn wrote:
> > How do the 'expunge_days' option in imapd.conf and the -X flag to 
> > cyr_expire play together? Currently we're using this cyrus.conf entry:
> >   delprune	cmd="cyr_expire -E 3 -X 3 -D 3" at=040
> > I'm not sure if we should use 'expunge_days: 3' from now on or if it 
> > doesn't matter?
> 
> Good question!  I hadn't noticed that one.  I wonder when messages
> qualifying under "expunge_days" get expunged if cyr_expire is not run or
> run with a different value.
> 
> Also does expunge_days calculate from when the message was *expunged* or
> when the message was *received*.  I know there has been questions about
> that concerning cyr_expire in the past.  The documentation of
> expunge_days seem clearer than the text for cyr_expire [of the previous
> text for cyr_expire].
> 
> man cyr_expire:
>   Expunge previously deleted messages older than expunge-duration
>   (when  using the "delayed" expunge mode). Format is the same as
>   delete-duration.
> 
>   NOTE: "older" than "expunge-duration".  At least to me the phrase
>         "older" seems ambiguous. The documentation for delete-duration
>         uses the same phrasing.
> 
> man imapd.conf
>   Number of days to retain expunged messages before cleaning up
>   their index records.  The default is 7. 
> 
>   NOTE: "number of days to retain" seems [to me] to clearly mean X
>         number of days since the message was expunged.
> 

Man - I'd better go write some nicer docs!

expunge_days is kind of a "fallback" if you don't run cyr_expire it
will still clean up eventually.  So long as you set it longer than
your cyr_expire time then it's fine - otherwise your other processes
will do the cleanup when they feel like it.

It's purely a "clean out expunged records" value, and it calculates
from when they were expunged.  Nothing about the expunge cleanup
cares when the message was received.

Bron.