Mail downloads old messages, or how to prune server effectively

[jimlooney]

So I am running 10.3.9 on an XServe, using Tenon’s Post Office to handle mail delivery. Recently I have decide to start pruning off old messages on the server (anything older than 180 days). However, in testing I have noticed that if I remove an old message from the server, if I am using Apple’s Mail client on my personal computer, Mail will redownload all my old messages from the server. So it’s like Apple’s Mail client stores a listing of all messages on the server in the account, and if that list changes somehow (on the server, not the client), then the client thinks it needs to redownload all of the messages again.

Can anyone else confirm this?

If this is truly the case, it means I can’t really prune old messages from my server, else users will start to get duplicate copies of old messages.

[xdavid]

How are you “pruning” old messages?

Are you using pop or imap accounts?

-david

[jimlooney]

sorry for the late reply. Since I last posted, I have it working fine and have not had any issues with Mac Mail, so I think I am good now.

But in case someone else has similar issue show up: All accounts are POP3. I am using Post.Office to handle email. It stores all messages in a single file on the server along with a cache file (though I think this is primarily for squirrelmail). So all I really have to do is check the date on the message file and remove it if it is older than my threshold. Then I just clear the cache file (since it’ll be rebuilt the next time the account is accessed) and it seems to work great.

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