UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I would like to know if I can place a cron job (and what it might be of course) to delete all the mail in an inbox? Here are the servers specs:

Operating systemLinuxService StatusClick to ViewKernel version2.6.28.9Machine Typei686Apache version2.2.11 (Unix)PERL version5.8.8Path to PERL/usr/bin/perlPath to sendmail/usr/sbin/sendmailInstalled Perl ModulesClick to ViewPHP version5.2.8MySQL version5.0.67-communitycPanel Build11.24.4-RELEASE 34599ThemecPanel X v2.6.0

well, to delete all mail in an inbox, without reading it you can

Code:

cat /dev/null >/var/spool/mail/<username>

so a cronjob to do that would look like

Code:

13 5 * * * cat /dev/null >/var/spool/mail/<username> 2>/dev/null

which will run at 05:13 every day
btw, in case you were wondering, the 2>/dev/null at the end of the line will stop any error output from the cat command, because if there is any output at all cron will mail it to you, and if it is your inbox that you are deleting, then that would defeat the object.

The script that I use as a cron job is :-

Code:

#!/bin/sh

echo 'd *' | mail -N

exit 0