Auto-Cleaning folder schedule

SYSTEM INFORMATION
OS type and version RHEL 9.2
Webmin version 2.021
Usermin version 7.7

Is it possible to adjust the Auto-Cleaning schedule to once day instead of once per hour?

I can do it manually using Webmin, System, Scheduled Cron Jobs for each individual user, but I would like it to be a system wide change.

Isn’t this somewhere in theme settings?
I would also be a little aprehensive of anything that “cleans” (deletes?) anything once an hour - that makes a bit of a mockery of taking backups with a longer interval. I must investigate what cron jobs are running :frowning:

I would appreciate some help on this. @staff

It’s OK to say “It’s not possible” or “I don’t know”

I am not sure which rule I transgressed? As you know I use this forum a lot and always try to be mindful of how my posts might impact people.

I run a car forum that is approaching 19 years old, it it’s heyday it was getting over 400 posts each day, so I am well aware of good forum protocol.

Perhaps it’s because the Required System Information for the Usermin topic doesn’t ask whether I have Pro?

Perhaps it’s because I added the @ at the end hoping for a knowledgeable answer? That is just something I have seen others do when a question appears to be facing obscurity.

Or it’s just something else. I would appreciate knowing.

This. I usually call it out specifically, which I should have done here, too. Was just trying to catch up on things and already had the guidelines link handy.

We ask that folks be patient. We read everything, as time allows. If I know the answer off-hand, I’ll answer without being called in specifically.

I try to protect the time and attention of Jamie and Ilia as much as possible since they’re working on code right now (well, they’re working on code always, but especially right now as there’s several big new releases coming in a day or two).

Basically, I’m just asking folks not to try to jump the line by making us get additional notifications about your posts.

And, to answer your question: I don’t know. I didn’t even know that was a thing. Where are you seeing auto-clean?

Thanks Joe. Perhaps an explanation of how the @ really works? Does it send PMs or does it just add a flag? or whatever.

In Usermin. Manage Folders, on the right you can select Auto-Cleaning which allows you to set criteria for cleaning.

Then in Webmin, System, Scheduled Cron Jobs, you will find cron jobs per user ending in …/mailbox/auto.pl that are set to run at a random minute, but All hours and All days.

As I am running my email accounts as POP3 I will be using the Auto0Cleaning probably for most clients and would like to reduce the cron job load.
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It triggers a notification and adds an entry in the notifications list, in addition to an entry in the New list. It just means we (staff) see it multiple times. It’s not a big deal, we just get quite a lot of notifications, already, because we get all the staff PMs for support tickets, and I’d rather people stop tagging us in, as though we aren’t already spending as much time as we can here and answering as many questions as possible.

The auto.pl job is not configurable, but I thought that was for autoresponders and maybe forwards. But, I’m not familiar with the auto-delete feature, so have to do a little poking around.

The auto.pl cron job is setup with this code: usermin/mailbox/mailbox-lib.pl at c2687fdb27fc560613b41370035082ffdc20f9e4 · webmin/usermin · GitHub

I’ll note that uses cron jobs, which new code doesn’t often use (Webmin has its own light-weight scheduler now, that Jamie uses for most new scheduled stuff, and has for several years). I think that means this is quite old code, and probably eligible to get a refactor at some point.

Though I have to say I’m a little uncomfortable with taking email auto-deletion out of the control of the user. That’s pretty unusual on modern email systems. Quotas can insure your users don’t go over, and if they want to handle it with auto-deletion, their email client can delete on download.

It’s just the scheduling that I want to change system wide from once per hour to once per day.

I started doing it manually per user, then thought that there should be a way to do it system wide. I have looked in a lot of places, possibly missing the answer.

This isn’t affecting the user experience or control at all, just how often the cleanup happens.

So, is there a way to adjust the schedule system wide?

Not without manually editing the cronjobs. The schedule is currently hard-coded (though randomized).

Would it be a good idea if you could make it once a day only as a default?

Are you talking about deleting old email?

For spam and trash, that’s selectable / configurable for all users on a virtual server in Virtualmin > Server Configuration > Spam and Virus Delivery.

Additional and more-granular auto-cleaning options are available in Usermin > Mail > Manage Folders.

I believe the default for any of the auto-cleaning jobs is daily at the time the job was enabled.

Richard

Hi Richard,

Your first suggestion only offers to delete trash. As nearly all of my clients use pop3 some of them don’t have a Delete from Server option set within their email client, hence my wish to do it with the folder cleanup.

At present it runs a cron job once per hour which I think is a waste of resources for a job that only needs to be done once a day.

I have user that consistently has over 4gb of mail (don’t ask) the hourly run uses so little resource I never notice it running but I guess it may make a difference if you have loads of users with big mail boxes all being pruned but as has been stated earlier in the thread that these run randomly and should not affect the parent server

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