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| rmOldMail v0.1.0                                                      |
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# Copyright (c) 2001 Tobias von Koch <tvk@von-koch.com>
#
# All rights reserved. Redistribution and use in source and binary
# forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that
# this copyright notice is retained.
#
# THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED
# WARRANTIES ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR(S) BE
# LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY OR
# CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES RESULTING FROM THE USE OR MISUSE OF THIS
# SOFTWARE.

A: FAQ
*********************

1. What is rmOldMail?
=====================
 rmOldMail is a little perl script which removes all mails older than a
 configurable number of months from a mailbox file.
 It is possible to use rmOldMail on a running mailserver, it won't confuse
 your MTA or POP3-Server.

2. Are my mails stored in a mailbox (MBOX-style) file?
======================================================
 Mailbox files typically look like the following:
  Every message starts with a line like:
  	"From f@paf.net  Wed May 30 18:43:19 2001"
 
 Even Netscape Messenger stores its mails in mailbox (MBOX-style) files. I did
 not use Outlook, so I don't know how it stores the mails (when I look at the
 company which sells Outlook I have to assume it uses a proprietary format).

3. Why is this script better than quotas?
=========================================
 Quotas are limits on the size of directories/files.

 If you enable quotas on your customers mailbox files, you'll have a problem:
 When the quota is reached every mail sent to the customer will bounce.

 If you're using rmOldMail, you won't have that problem - every mail will
 arrive and the very old ones, which are still lieing around in the mailbox
 will be deleted. This saves disk space - and is not really a problem for your
 customers.

 In some situations a combination of quite high quotas (against mail bombs)
 and rmOldMail is the best way to go.

B: INSTALL
*********************
1. How do I build/install/configure rmOldMail?
==============================================
 First let it do some checks, type:

  # ./configure
 
 Then edit some lines in the file rmoldmail.pl, which look like this:
	my $tempdir = "/tmp";  # and:
	my $max_age = 2;

 What they mean is documented in the file.

 After that, copy rmoldmail.pl to a directory like /usr/sbin:
  # cp rmoldmail.pl /usr/sbin

2. How do I use rmOldMail?
==========================
 There are three possibilities:
   a.) You only want to remove old mails from one file. Use:
	# rmoldmail.pl <file_name>

   b.) You want to remove old mails from every mailbox on your system, where
       mailboxes are all in one directory, normally /var/spool/mail.
	# find -exec rmoldmail.pl {} \;

   c.) You want to remove old mails from every mailbox on your system, where
       every user has its own mailbox in its home directory:
        # find /home -name mbox -exec rmoldmail {} \;

EOF
