How can I search and delete mail?

Login or Register to Ask a Question and Join Our Community

How can I search and delete mail?

Tags

linux, mail linux search delete

Login to Discuss or Reply to this Discussion in Our Community

Operating Systems Linux How can I search and delete mail?

02-01-2015

Registered User

8, 0

Join Date: Mar 2007

Last Activity: 10 March 2015, 12:21 PM EDT

Location: Toronto, ON Canada

Posts: 8

Thanks Given: 2

Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts

How can I search and delete mail?

Hi,

I'd like to delete emails on one of my Linux boxes using a criteria and I don't really know where to start. Any suggestions?

The emails I'd like to delete have all the following sub-string: checkdefunct.sh.sh

I have more than 187.000 emails and 90% of them I'd like to get rid of.

Thank you,

Fabio

Last edited by rbatte1; 02-02-2015 at 08:00 AM..

fabiogilr

View Public Profile for fabiogilr

Find all posts by fabiogilr

02-01-2015

Registered User

15,129, 5,008

Join Date: Jul 2012

Last Activity: 4 May 2020, 4:31 PM EDT

Location: Aachen, Germany

Posts: 15,129

Thanks Given: 735

Thanked 5,008 Times in 4,483 Posts

This depends on what format you use to store those mails. In the "mbox" format on *nix, used by - amongst others - thunderbird as well, every mail eintry starts with the word From , to be distinguished from From: which shows up a few lines down.
So - first make a backup of your mail file, and then check with trial and error if you can locate your search string between two From s and print the entry if not. Check also if the result file is interpretable by your mail program.

This User Gave Thanks to RudiC For This Post:

RudiC

View Public Profile for RudiC

Find all posts by RudiC

Login or Register to Ask a Question

Previous Thread | Next Thread

9 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting

1. Solaris

How to delete all mail at once?

Hi guys, I have 459 mails sent to me by cron. I stopped the service and I will like to delete all the mail. Is there a command I can use to delete all my mail at once? Thanks guys

2. Shell Programming and Scripting

Move and later delete mail data of nonexistant users.

Hello everyone! i hope u can help me... i need a script that is able to do: When a user gets deleted in the ldap DB, the mail folder remains. How can i move to another location and delete it after a month? :wall:

3. Shell Programming and Scripting

Search and delete

A file(example viv.txt) contains a n number of rows like 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 11,22,33,44,55,66,77,88 1,3,9,7,8,5,2,6,4 Requirement: If number "5" exist in the sixth position then it should delete the whole line.like this it should check for all rows in a file(viv.txt) . please help on this.

4. Shell Programming and Scripting

Search and delete

Gurus I have a CSV containing 60K records.Each row has 8 columns. On some rows ,for the 7th column ,i find word 'UnknownState(898914497)' repeated many times. e.g <N_HOST> <tcp> <*> <*> <*> <*> ...

5. AIX

AIX auto delete old mail messages

We have had an issue where the mail file filled up. Is there a setting in sendmail.cf to automatically remove old emails? Say after 14 days. If not is there any way automatically to delete older mail files??

6. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Can I delete the file var/spool/mail/news?

The file var/spool/mail/news has grown very large and takes up too much space. Can I delete this without any problem?

7. Shell Programming and Scripting

Delete all mails using mailx or mail

Hi , ?im a newbie using shell scripts. Is there any way to write a script that will delete all mails from my mailbox using mail or mailx command Thanks for your time E. Festas

8. Shell Programming and Scripting

Script to delete all mail in mailx

Hello all, Can some help me write a small script that when executed will delete all mail in mailx? I am having issues where /var is getting full often due to a lot of mail being stored, I would like to run a script on cron which would delete mail every 2 days, any help is much appreciated.

9. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

How can I delete all my mail in Linux Red Hat 7.2???

I have so many mails in my mailbox and I just cant delete each one individually. Is there a way to clear up every mail in my mail box without having to actually deal with each one separately????

Login or Register to Ask a Question