doveadm-expunge¶

NAME¶

doveadm-expunge - Expunge messages matching given search query

SYNOPSIS¶

doveadm [GLOBAL OPTIONS] expunge [-S socket_path] [-d] -A search_query

doveadm [GLOBAL OPTIONS] expunge [-S socket_path] [-d] -F file search_query

doveadm [GLOBAL OPTIONS] expunge [-S socket_path] [-d] -u user search_query

DESCRIPTION¶

This command can be used to expunge mails matching the given search query. It is typically used to expunge old mails from users’ Trash and/or Spam mailboxes. To test which messages a given search query would match, you can use doveadm fetch or doveadm search commands.

In the first form, doveadm(1) will execute the expunge action with the environment of the logged in system user.

In the second form, the command will be performed for all users.

In the third form, doveadm(1) will expunge messages of the users listed in the given file.

In the fourth form, only matching mails of the given user (s) will be expunged.

GLOBAL OPTIONS¶

Global doveadm(1) options:

-D: Enables verbosity and debug messages.
-O: Do not read any config file, just use defaults.
-k: Preserve entire environment for doveadm, not just import_environment.
-v: Enables verbosity, including progress counter.
-i instance-name: If using multiple Dovecot instances, choose the config file based on this instance name. See instance_name setting for more information.
-c config-file: Read configuration from the given config-file. By default it first reads config socket, and then falls back to /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf. You can also point this to config socket of some instance running compatible version.
-o setting=value: Overrides the configuration setting from /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf and from the userdb with the given value. In order to override multiple settings, the -o option may be specified multiple times.

OPTIONS¶

-A

If the -A option is present, the command will be performed for all users. Using this option in combination with system users from userdb { driver = passwd } is not recommended, because it contains also users with a lower UID than the one configured with the first_valid_uid setting.

When the SQL userdb module is used make sure that the iterate_query setting in /etc/dovecot/dovecot-sql.conf.ext matches your database layout. When using the LDAP userdb module, make sure that the iterate_attrs and iterate_filter settings in /etc/dovecot/dovecot-ldap.conf.ext match your LDAP schema. Otherwise doveadm(1) will be unable to iterate over all users.

-F file: Execute the command for all the users in the file. This is similar to the -A option, but instead of getting the list of users from the userdb, they are read from the given file. The file contains one username per line.

-d: Delete the mailbox if it is empty after expunging.

-S socket_path

The option’s argument is either an absolute path to a local UNIX domain socket, or a hostname and port (hostname:port), in order to connect a remote host via a TCP socket.

This allows an administrator to execute doveadm(1) mail commands through the given socket.

-u user/mask: Run the command only for the given user. It’s also possible to use ‘*’ and ‘?’ wildcards (e.g. -u *@example.org).

ARGUMENTS¶

search_query: Expunge messages matching this search query. See doveadm-search-query(7) for details.

EXAMPLE¶

This example expunges messages from Spam mailbox that were saved/copied there more than two weeks ago:

doveadm expunge -u jane.doe@example.org mailbox Spam savedbefore 2w

REPORTING BUGS¶

Report bugs, including doveconf -n output, to the Dovecot Mailing List <dovecot@dovecot.org>. Information about reporting bugs is available at: https://dovecot.org/bugreport.html