Re: UNIX mail defaults

[Mark Blunier <blunier@ocslink.com>]

Previously Robert Threet (rthreet@yahoo.com):

> I guess what I meant was, can you set this value in
> Sendmail and if so where.  

No, you can't.  Sendmail sends mail, it does not store
the mail.

> 
> What happened is, a user asked me when e-mail gets
> deleted.

I assume you are talking about unix.  If you are talking
about outlook, you have my sympathies, but not my help.
Under unix, the mail generally gets added to a file,
/var/spool/mail/<username>.  The users can have delivery
programs like procmail move the incoming messages to
different folders, if they choose.  For example, I have
my mail moved to 
/home/blunier/.Mail/blunier
/home/blunier/.Mail/personal
/home/blunier/.Mail/luci
/home/blunier/.Mail/B-body
/home/blunier/.Mail/debian-user

When each new email comes in, it gets sorts and appended to the
end of the appropriate file.  If it gets deleted, its because
mutt (my email viewing program) deletes it, when I hit the delete
key.  When email is deleted, the file is edited by mutt and the
specific email deleted is removed from the file.  If you wanted
to have all email older that 30 days deleted, you could write a
script that is run every night that examines the mail files, and
deletes the old messages from the file.




>  I inherited the system (or the sendmail.cf,
> anyway) so I hesitate to say "No, we don't delete mail
> here."  'cause he's probably asking due to some lost
> mail.

Check your cron scripts, and see what gets run.

Mark


> 
> --- Mark Blunier <blunier@ocslink.com> wrote:
> > Previously Robert Threet (rthreet@yahoo.com):
> > 
> > > I am wondering whether mail is kept forever after
> > > reading it or if it has (or can have) a specified
> > > time-to-live.  Is this a Sendmail, UNIX or Pine
> > issue?
> > 
> > It depends.  Usually it is up to you, the person
> > that
> > decides if you want to hit the delete key or not. 
> > On
> > some systems that centrally store email, the system
> > will delete old messages.  This is often the case at
> > companies that put up with outlook.
> > 
> > Mark
> > -
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> > with
> > "unsubscribe luci-discuss" in the body.
> 
> 
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