[conspire] Linux program to remove mail from server?

[Edmund J. Biow]

Rick Moen wrote:

>Quoting Edmund J. Biow (ejb1 at isp.com):
>
>  
>
>>Anybody know of a nice brain-dead, X11, open source Linux GUI program 
>>that removes email from your ISP's server?  
>>
>Googling for "pop3 delete linux" brings up, on the #2 hit:
>  
>
I Googled 'linux remove mail server', I'm afraid, and didn't see much in 
the first 100 hits. 

>    * CleanPOP
>      logs into your POP3 server and deletes messages which have had a
>      local (or remote) spam header added to them, as well as messages
>      that have been on the server for longer than a user-configurable
>      amount of time. cleanpop helps you keep your POP3 mailbox clean,
>      so you can use webmail or download messages from your POP3 server
>      to other machines without having to deal with spam. cleanpop also
>      prevents your POP3 mailbox from filling up by purging old messages 
>  
>
Command line, but I'll look at it.  It looks like it might be within my 
rather feeble grasp and would do what I want.

>    * p3c
>      a pop3 checker allowing you to inspect your mailbox before
>      downloading and delete any unwanted messages. For you to choose
>      wich messages to delete, p3c will show you the "To:", "From:" and
>      "Subject:" portions of the mail and then ask you if you want 
>  
>
Unmaintained, command line, looks like a step back from eremove.

>    * Popcheck
>      an ncurses pop3 mail checker that has the facility to delete
>      emails off the server without downloading them 
>  
>
A shell script to be used with Fetchmail to filter Swen & Netsky worms.

>    * Popdump
>      a non-interactive and low-level POP3/APOP utility supporting
>      several POP3 commands. popdump allows to get the number of
>      messages that you have on an account, fetch or delete a list of
>      messages if their header is matched by a regular expression and so
>      can be used as a POP3 diagnostic tool or a rudimentary spam filter
>      what is helpful on slow connection 
>  
>
Which reminds me, I've got to take a popdump.

>    * PopWash
>      a simple graphical application to delete messages on a pop3 server
>      without downloading the message bodies. The mail headers are
>      filtered based on user defined black and white lists and presented
>     in a list where additional manual changes are possible 
>  
>

Looked promising, but when I tried to run the shell script I got:

can't find package Gnocl 0.5.14
    while executing
"package require Gnocl 0.5.14"
    (file "./popwash" line 16)

Oh well, I can always toggle my KVM switch into Windows and fire up 
Mailwasher, QuickDelete, ePrompter, Popcorn, PopTray... I've used 
others, but all of those work fine.  Download (they are all freeware) 
and double click to install, get a nice shiny icon in my Start Menu...  
But I must resist the dark side...

>   * SpamX
>      logs into POP3 mail servers, and deletes mails coming from
>      specified senders. You do not need to download them locally, nor
>      to setup any procmail and stuff. Simple and clean. SpamX is
>      inspired from Mailwasher 
>  
>
Sounds promising.  It didn't like the version of Java I think I have:
    j2sdk-1_4_2_04-i586-3 (41716 kB) [Status: INSTALLED]

So I'm downloading a 35.5 MB bin file.  I'll tell you how it goes when 
I've got it up and running.

Canceled downloading a third of the way through.  It is a big hairy 
filter that takes lots of configuration, doesn't do what I want, and the 
Windows version times out after 30 days.  I was able to install the 
Windows version and test it first because it is only 2.1 MB exe, & my 
older 1.4.0  Java version seems adequate, unlike the 41.7 MB J2sdk on my 
Slack box mentioned above. BTW, the Windows version of SpamX kicked up 
IE for the help file, even though Firefox is configured to be my default 
browser.  No thanks.


>So, script it.
>
>It strikes me that you've overspecifed the solution by saying "must be
>graphical" -- but go with whatever works for you.
>  
>
I could do that, maybe, with enough time, but I'm not a programmer, just 
a Newbie swine.  I have written an occasional simple script (e.g. to run 
Setiathome from a given directory), but it would take me a lot of time.  
I guess the easiest thing to do would be to make 5 different eremove 
directories, each pointing to a different configuration directory, then 
call them up with a single script.  It might be worth it as a learning 
exercise, but right now I just want to get on with it and get some work 
done without spending many hours (weeks?) learning how to write scripts. 
As you may have gleened, I'm not quite the brightest penny in the jar.  
And if there is an easy-to-use GUI tool, I don't want to re-invent the 
wheel.

>>Also, does anyone have any suggestions as to any other good places to 
>>look for Linux software?
>>    
>>
>
>In general, you should stay within the packaging system for your
>distribution if humanly possible, for a boatload of reasons.  If you
>find yourself compiling tarballs or using foreign binaries often, maybe
>you need to switch distributions.
>  
>
Agreed, having mucked up two installs in the last few months using 
application-supplied update tools that were supposed to handle all 
dependencies for me.  So I was hesitant to install a 35.5 MB bin file 
that could have polluted my relatively pristine Slackware install.  But 
I'd aleady looked over everything that seemed like it would work over at 
www.linuxpackages.net (my primary source of tgz files), as well as the 
Slackware web site package browser (http://www.slackware.com/pb/), 
swaret, and slapt-apt, though as you may have intuited from my Google 
search, maybe my search skills are not all they could be.

Slack,

Ed