Delete Old Spam Emails Custom Cron


 
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers Delete Old Spam Emails Custom Cron
# 1  
Old 07-29-2008
Delete Old Spam Emails Custom Cron

Hey Guys,

I've done some research however I got stuck. My goal is to create a cron job that runs every hour and goes through all web accounts on my server and deletes spam emails that are older than 3 days. This is what I came up with:

Code:
0 * * * * find /home/*/mail/*/*/.spam/cur/* -type f -mtime +3 -exec rm{}

HOWEVER Smilie ... when i test just a piece of that command:

Code:
find /home/*/mail/*/*/.spam/cur/* -type f -print |xargs ls|wc -l

I get the pretty "Argument list too long" error. I dont want to proceed setting up that cron job until I'm 100% sure that it is correct and will work on all user accouts with some of them having over 50,000 spam emails in ther .spam/cur folder. Any advice?
 
Login or Register to Ask a Question

Previous Thread | Next Thread

8 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting

1. Emergency UNIX and Linux Support

How to prevent emails as spam?

If an email is sent from our application server(running on AIX) to an id that is outside of the organization like gmail etc, and if gmail should not treat the mail as spam, what has to be done from unix level? (7 Replies)
Discussion started by: ggayathri
7 Replies

2. Shell Programming and Scripting

How to disable cron emails, but only for logrotate only not for other logs?

Guys, is there a script or command? how to disable cron emails, but only for logrotate only not for other logs (3 Replies)
Discussion started by: kenshinhimura
3 Replies

3. Shell Programming and Scripting

Shell Script to Delete Old Cron Jobs

I have a cron entry to deploy a website portal from a staging server to a series of production servers on a weekly basis. On occasion, a random office worker who knows nothing about Linux let alone cron, will be tasked to update news picks on the staging server and then run a manual deployment... (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: AndrewT
2 Replies

4. Shell Programming and Scripting

Using cron to delete directories 90 days old

We use Solaris 10 x86 and I want to use a cron job to remove directories +90 old. Currently I have the command below but it only cleans the files and keeps the directory. What am I doing wrong? /opt/tesk/batch/kit/archive/* -mtime +90 -exec rm -r {} \: Thank you (3 Replies)
Discussion started by: oh-daa
3 Replies

5. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Cron to delete email help needed

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... (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: markmatu
2 Replies

6. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Cron job to delete files

Hi everyone! I'm sorry, I'm a total noob but would really appreciate any advice or help. I want to create a cron job that would run every hour and would look inside a few different folders. If any new files were created within those folders within the last hour they would be destroyed, but any... (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: jessn
2 Replies

7. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

CRON. How to delete files within a directory

I'd like to delete ALL files on a daily basis within a directory that are over a day old. Anyone know how I can automate this through Cron as I have 146 websites to administer. I've tried... 30 02 * * * /home/myspace/tmp/webalizer -atime + 1\! -type d -exec rm -f {} \; but all i get is an... (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: southoxon
1 Replies

8. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

How do we delete spam email on mmdf

Please advise on how to delete spam email from mmdf email, and The Unix spec below: System = SCO_SV Release = 3.2v5.0.5 (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: esh
2 Replies
Login or Register to Ask a Question
CRON(8) 						    BSD System Manager's Manual 						   CRON(8)

NAME
cron -- daemon to execute scheduled commands (Vixie Cron) SYNOPSIS
cron [-s] [-o] [-x debugflag[,...]] DESCRIPTION
The cron utility is launched by launchd(8) when it sees the existence of /etc/crontab or files in /usr/lib/cron/tabs. There should be no need to start it manually. See /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.vix.cron.plist for details. The cron utility searches /usr/lib/cron/tabs for crontab files which are named after accounts in /etc/passwd; crontabs found are loaded into memory. The cron utility also searches for /etc/crontab which is in a different format (see crontab(5)). The cron utility then wakes up every minute, examining all stored crontabs, checking each command to see if it should be run in the current minute. When executing commands, any output is mailed to the owner of the crontab (or to the user named in the MAILTO environment variable in the crontab, if such exists). Additionally, cron checks each minute to see if its spool directory's modification time (or the modification time on /etc/crontab) has changed, and if it has, cron will then examine the modification time on all crontabs and reload those which have changed. Thus cron need not be restarted whenever a crontab file is modified. Note that the crontab(1) command updates the modification time of the spool directory whenever it changes a crontab. Available options: -s Enable special handling of situations when the GMT offset of the local timezone changes, such as the switches between the standard time and daylight saving time. The jobs run during the GMT offset changes time as intuitively expected. If a job falls into a time interval that disappears (for example, during the switch from standard time) to daylight saving time or is duplicated (for example, during the reverse switch), then it is handled in one of two ways: The first case is for the jobs that run every at hour of a time interval overlapping with the disappearing or duplicated interval. In other words, if the job had run within one hour before the GMT offset change (and cron was not restarted nor the crontab(5) changed after that) or would run after the change at the next hour. They work as always, skip the skipped time or run in the added time as usual. The second case is for the jobs that run less frequently. They are executed exactly once, they are not skipped nor executed twice (unless cron is restarted or the user's crontab(5) is changed during such a time interval). If an interval disappears due to the GMT offset change, such jobs are executed at the same absolute point of time as they would be in the old time zone. For example, if exactly one hour disappears, this point would be during the next hour at the first minute that is specified for them in crontab(5). -o Disable the special handling of situations when the GMT offset of the local timezone changes, to be compatible with the old (default) behavior. If both options -o and -s are specified, the option specified last wins. -x debugflag[,...] Enable writing of debugging information to standard output. One or more of the following comma separated debugflag identifiers must be specified: bit currently not used ext make the other debug flags more verbose load be verbose when loading crontab files misc be verbose about miscellaneous one-off events pars be verbose about parsing individual crontab lines proc be verbose about the state of the process, including all of its offspring sch be verbose when iterating through the scheduling algorithms test trace through the execution, but do not perform any actions FILES
/usr/lib/cron/tabs Directory for personal crontab files SEE ALSO
crontab(1), launchctl(1), crontab(5), launchd.plist(5), launchd(8) AUTHORS
Paul Vixie <paul@vix.com> BSD
June 17, 2007 BSD