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DOVEADM-PURGE(1) Dovecot DOVEADM-PURGE(1)

NAME

doveadm-purge - Remove messages with refcount=0 from mdbox files

SYNOPSIS

doveadm [GLOBAL OPTIONS] purge [-S socket_path] -A

doveadm [GLOBAL OPTIONS] purge [-S socket_path] -F file

doveadm [GLOBAL OPTIONS] purge [-S socket_path] --no-userdb-lookup

doveadm [GLOBAL OPTIONS] purge [-S socket_path] -u user

DESCRIPTION

The doveadm purge command is used to remove all messages with refcount=0 from a user's mail storage. The refcount of a message is decreased to 0 when the user (or some administration utility) has expunged all instances of a message from all mailboxes.

In the first form, the command will be executed for all users.

In the second form, the command will be executed for all users listed in the given file.

In the third form, the command will be performed for the user contained in the USER environment variable.

In the last form, only messages of the given user (s) will be purged.

GLOBAL OPTIONS

Global doveadm(1)

-D

Enables verbosity and debug messages.

-O

Do not read any config file, just use defaults. The dovecot_storage_version setting defaults to the latest version, but can be overridden with

-k

Preserve entire environment for doveadm, not just import_environment setting.

-v

Enables verbosity, including progress counter.

-i instance-name

If using multiple Dovecot instances, choose the config file based on this instance name.

See instance_name setting for more information.

-c config-file

Read configuration from the given config-file. By default it first reads config socket, and then falls back to /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf. You can also point this to config socket of some instance running compatible version.

-o setting=value

Overrides the configuration setting from /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf and from the userdb with the given value. In order to override multiple settings, the -o option may be specified multiple times.

OPTIONS

-A

If the -A option is present, the command will be performed for all users. Using this option in combination with system users from userdb { driver = passwd } is not recommended, because it contains also users with a lower UID than the one configured with the first_valid_uid setting.

When the SQL userdb module is used, make sure that the userdb_sql_iterate_query setting setting matches your database layout.

When using the LDAP userdb module, make sure that the userdb_fields setting and userdb_ldap_iterate_fields setting settings match your LDAP schema. Otherwise doveadm(1) will be unable to iterate over all users.

-F file

Execute the command for all the users in the file. This is similar to the -A option, but instead of getting the list of users from the userdb, they are read from the given file. The file contains one username per line.

--no-userdb-lookup

Do not perform userdb lookup. Use the USER environment variable to specify the username.

-S socket_path

The option's argument is either an absolute path to a local UNIX domain socket, or a hostname and port (hostname:port), in order to connect a remote host via a TCP socket.

This allows an administrator to execute doveadm(1) mail commands through the given socket.

-u user/mask

Run the command only for the given user. It's also possible to use '*' and '?' wildcards (e.g. -u *@example.org).

REPORTING BUGS

Report bugs, including doveconf -n output, to the Dovecot Mailing List ⟨dovecot@dovecot.org⟩. Information about reporting bugs is available at: https://dovecot.org/bugreport.html

SEE ALSO

doveadm(1)

Additional resources:

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dbox
March 2025 78ffb79