Hi,
I've found a way to automatically keep my list folders small, and do it
automatically with mutt. Let me show you how I did it. There's one
problem, but I'll get to that...
Let's look at some relevant portions of my .muttrc:
###
### Scoring
###
set score = yes
#replied
score ~Q =980
#from me
score ~P =970
#references mmp
score ~x(matchmail.com|mis-mike-wstn) =960
#mark old messages for delete (only in folders
in in/ or lists/)
#check colors below
folder-hook !in/|lists/ unscore ~r>4w =999
folder-hook in/|lists/ score ~r>4w =999
#warn about soon to be deleted messages (only in folders in in/ or lists/)
#check colors below
folder-hook !in/|lists/ unscore ~r>3w =998
folder-hook in/|lists/ score ~r>3w =998
#do the delete, but only move it to the deleted folder (it's log rotated by a
cron script)
folder-hook in/|lists/ 'push T~n999\n1\n/~O\n\;s=del/deleted\n'
#Confirm copy to mbox?
set confirmappend = yes
I have some threads in my inbox folder that I want to keep longer than four
weeks (look at the "push" command), and I noticed that each thread had a
message and a reply, so replied, from me, and messages that reference my
domain or local workstation needed to be excluded from the "to be deleted"
scoring (999).
Whew. Now let's look at the delete function (the push line). It needs to
be all scrunched together like that to work, but I'm going to split it up to
exibit how it works:
T~n999\n
Tag all messages with a score of 999
1\n
Go to message number 1 (this is important -- I'll show you why later)
/~O\n
Go to the first old message
\;
run a command on the tagged messages
s=del/deleted\n
save the messages in =del/deleted
Now all you need is a cron script that will rotate that file called =del/deleted
25 6 * * 1-5 savelog -c 150 -t -p $HOME/Mail/del/deleted
This will keep 6 months of old email that can be easily searched with normal
tools. Note: you want to make sure you have "-t" in the savelog command.
It will create a new blank file. The reason why is that I have mutt default
to maildir type mboxes and savelog can't do much with that, and with that
empty file, mutt will think it's a mbox file and append...
For this to work, it depends on a specific directory structure. Here's how
my tree looks under $HOME/Mail:
.
|-- archive
...
|-- del
|-- in
| |-- inbox
| |-- jacquelyn_fedyk
| |-- junk
| | |-- match.com
| | |-- not2me
| | `-- spam
| |-- lists
| | |-- announcements
| | |-- debian
| | |-- debian-devel
| | |-- debian-user
| | |-- ext2-devel
| | |-- ext3
| | |-- freeswan
| | |-- kernel-janitor
| | |-- linux-aacraid
| | |-- linux-mm
| | |-- lkml
| | |-- openoffice.org
| | |-- powerpc
| | |-- samba
| | `-- wine
|-- log
|-- people
...
`-- postponed
All mail folders not under in are *not* automatically pruned for old
messages...
Now, let's get to the problem.
The reason why I have the (Go to message number 1, then go to the first old
message) command in there is for
when the tag doesn't find any messages with a score of 999. If there are no
messages with a score of 999 and it doesn't go to line number 1 then it
would delete the message that is currently selected, which is usually a new
message (or oldest "old" message if there are not new messages). I haven't
been able to find any kind of "if" function in mutt config files. (if there
are no tagged messages then don't do anything! -- etc.) Currently, I just
"set confirmappend = yes" so that it asks me before it adds to =del/deleted,
but it gets annoying because sometimes I want to keep the first old message
and the top most message... So, any mutt gurus here that can help solve this?
PS: Want colors? Try these:
#URLs
color body red black [EMAIL PROTECTED]
color body red black (https?|ftp)://[\-\.\,/%~_:?\#a-zA-Z0-9]+
#Diff -u Patch coloring
color body brightred black (^[-].*)|([-][-][-].*)
color body brightgreen black (^[+].*)|([+][+][+].*)
#tagged
color index default brightdefault "~T"
#old
#color index white default "~O"
# New or replied to:
color index brightdefault default "~N|~Q"
# New or replied to:
color index brightdefault default "~N|~Q"
#from or to me or mmp in "References"
folder-hook inbox 'uncolor index green default "(~P|~p) | (~x matchmail.com |
~x mis-mike-wstn)"'
folder-hook !inbox 'color index green default "(~P|~p) | (~x matchmail.com | ~x
mis-mike-wstn)"'
#from me and mmp in "References"
folder-hook !inbox 'uncolor index green default "~p (~x matchmail.com | ~x
mis-mike-wstn)"'
folder-hook inbox 'color index green default "~P (~x matchmail.com | ~x
mis-mike-wstn)"'
#to me or mmp in "References" and new
color index brightwhite default "(~p | (~x matchmail.com | ~x
mis-mike-wstn)) ~N"
#about to expire
color index red default "~n 998"
#expired
color index brightred default "~n 999"
#flagged
color index brightyellow default "~F"
#deleted
color index brightred default "~D"
