Purging old email files from Cyrus-IMAPD v.3.0.9 on FreeBSD-12.0

[Savvas Karagiannidis]

Hi James,
I think deleted and expunged are explained well in the documentation.

Deleted: In IMAP when a user deletes an email, the email is actually only
flagged as deleted. The user can still see the message and even unset the
flag recovering the email.

Expunged: When the user issues the expunge command the flagged as deleted
messages above become inaccessible by the user. Without delayed delete this
is also where the message file gets deleted from the filesystem (purged).

The confusion is probably between purged and expired. For every email
message cyrus keeps a file on the mailbox folder and also an entry in the
cyrus index file  for that message. For a clean delete, both the file and
the index entry must be deleted. For some reasons they may not be both
removed at the same time... I think for performance reasons, replication
etc. So:

Purged: when the message file is deleted, it is considered purged. The
actual email can in no way be recovered.

Expired: The index entry for the message is removed. This usually happens
after it has been purged. Cyrus has no longer any knowledge of the message
ever existed.

Hope this clarifies things. For simplicity just consider cyr_expire purging
and expiring the messages.

Regards,
Savvas Karagiannidis



On Thu, May 16, 2019, 23:08 James B. Byrne <byrnejb at harte-lyne.ca> wrote:

>
>
> On Thu, May 16, 2019 11:00, Savvas Karagiannidis wrote:
> > Hi James,
> > the command that performs the actual removal of the files from the
> > file system is cyr_expire
> > <
> https://www.cyrusimap.org/imap/reference/manpages/systemcommands/cyr_expire.html
> >
> > According to your cyrus.conf and the manual of cyr_expire, the
> > operation is performed daily at 04:00. The command is executed
> > by the main cyrus process, so you don't have to do anything
> > else manually...
> > The parameters -D 180d and -X 180d specify that only mailboxes and
> > messages that are at least 180 days old will be deleted.
> >
> > When cyr_expire is executed you should see a line in your log file
> > like these:
> >
>
> Thanks.  I have a question though. If expunge == purge then why does
> the documentation distinguish between them?
>
> When is What ... Deleted, Expired, Expunged or Purged?
>
> https://www.cyrusimap.org/imap/reference/faqs/o-deleted-expired-expunged-purged.html
>
> Expunged
>
>     The message (which has been flagged as \Deleted) is also expunged,
> meaning that the user can in no way retrieve the message
> autonomously.
>
> Purged
>
>     The message’s index record may still exist (until they are
> expired), but the message file is removed from the filesystem, or
> in the context of folders, the mail folder is removed from the
> filesystem.
>
>
> This is what has me confused.
>
> Regards,
>
> --
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