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Can I automatically clean a folder in my mailbox? Let's say I want to automatically delete messages that are older than 3 months. Does dovecot/sieve have this option?

Mr. NoNe
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  • on reddit someone also ask about auto clean. https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/6v1x1b/is_it_possible_to_write_a_sieve_filter_to/ – Mr. NoNe Sep 22 '20 at 11:23

1 Answers1

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Apply sieve filter to mails older than x days

To archieve this goal you can use the commands doveadm moveand sieve-filter. You could also use doveadm expungebut with this approac you can delete or move mails older than X days.

First move all files older than 7 days to a temporary folder, in this case it is named sieve-tmp:

doveadm move -u test1@example.com INBOX.sieve-tmp user test1@example.com mailbox INBOX BEFORE $(date -d "$now -7 days" +%Y-%m-%d)

The commands takes the following arguments:

-u test1@example.com the source users mailbox

INBOX.sieve-tmp the folder to copy the mails to (INBOX/tmp)

user test1@example.com the destination users mailbox, in my case the same as the source mailbox

mailbox a required keyword

INBOX the source folder, in this case the INBOX

BEFORE $(date -d "$now -7 days" +%Y-%m-%d) the search filter. This filter returns mails created before the date YYYY-MM-DD. The date command delivers the date, 7 day from now. You can replace 7 with any desired number.

Created a sieve script to apply on mails older than 7 days. I created it using roundcube and deactivated it in the interface so it does not get applied to incoming mails. I called it 7d.

sieve-filter -e -W -C -u test1@example.com /var/mail/example.com/test1/sieve/7d.sieve INBOX.sieve-tmp

-e enables execution mode

-W enables write mode

-C forece compilation. The script is compiled to a binary.

-u test1@example.com runs the script for this user.

/var/mail/example.com/test1/sieve/7d.sieve path to the sieve script to be executed.

INBOX.sieve-tmp folder to execute the script on.

After this all the desired mails are processed and the rest can be moved back to the Inbox:

doveadm move -u test1@example.com INBOX user test1@example.com mailbox INBOX.sieve-tmp ALL

Final script

#!/bin/bash
doveadm move -u test1@example.com INBOX.sieve-tmp user test1@example.com mailbox INBOX BEFORE $(date -d "$now -7 days" +%Y-%m-%d)
sieve-filter -e -W -C -u test1@example.com /var/mail/example.com/test1/sieve/7d.sieve INBOX.sieve-tmp
doveadm move -u test1@example.com INBOX user test1@example.com mailbox INBOX.sieve-tmp ALL

If you want another script processing mails older than X day, just copy this block and replace the time reference.

The script can be called once a day via a cron job:

crontab -e

0 0 * * * /opt/filter-my-mails.sh
meles
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