[conspire] Re: Linux program to remove mail from server?

Wed May 4 16:25:39 PDT 2005

On Tuesday 26 April 2005 01:32 am, Dave Hartley wrote:
 > Date:
 > 04/26/05 01:32 am
 > I'm a little behind you; less linux savvy & more windoze dependent.
 > Mailwasher is a necessity...
 >
 > pls post your eventual answer for this much needed linux app

I finally found a program that will work for me, though it is indeed 
console-based.  It is called pop3browser, which I found on the Debian 
apt-cache when updating a newly installed SimplyMepis 3.3.1. 
http://packages.debian.org/unstable/mail/pop3browser
I guess I could compile from source on my Slackware and Vector machines.

Setup involved making a text file called .pop3browserrc and adding your 
accounts in the format:

hostname userid password

Then run the program from a term and call up individual accounts by 
typing its name (I'm too lazy, so I aliased it to 'pp'), and use a few 
simple commands.

Supported commands:
login n       : log into host no. n, use 'hosts' to get a list of 
available hosts
o(pen) n      : same as login
apop n        : same as login but uses APOP
c(lose)       : close current connection and delete marked mails
hosts         : list available hosts
list          : list sizes and message numbers of the mails on the account
m(ailbox)     : list message number, size, sender and subject for each mail
s(how) n      : show header and some body lines of mail number n
d(elete) n    : delete mail numbers n ('1 2 3' or '1-3' or '3-1' or '1 
2-3 5-4')
undel(ete) n  : remove delete tag from mail numbers n (s 'del')
k(ill) expr   : delete mails matching expr in header
u(nkill) expr : remove delete tag from mails matching expr in header
q(uit)        : quit program and delete marked mails
exit          : same as quit
help          : print this help

Here is an example of it in action deleting a few emails:

 36     3043 Bill Moseley <moseley at hank.org  Re: [conspire] Re: Linux progr
 37     5954 Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com  Re: [conspire] Re: Linux progr
 38     8598 "Edmund J. Biow" <ejb1 at isp.com  Re: [conspire] Re: Box needed
 39     3920 Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com  Re: [conspire] Fighting DDoS e
 40     3222 Don Marti <dmarti at zgp.org>      Re: [conspire] Fighting DDoS e
 41     3008 Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com  Re: [conspire] Fighting DDoS e
 42     3736 Steve Bibayoff <bibayoff at gmail  Re: [conspire] Fighting DDoS e
 43     3390 Bill Moseley <moseley at hank.org  Re: [conspire] Fighting DDoS e
 44     3008 Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com  Re: [conspire] Fighting DDoS e
pop3browser>d 39-44
marking message no. 39 for deletion
marking message no. 40 for deletion
marking message no. 41 for deletion
marking message no. 42 for deletion
marking message no. 43 for deletion
marking message no. 44 for deletion
pop3browser>  

It does what I need, albeit not as effortlessly as a GUI based program 
that can poll all my accounts at once and let me mouse the individual 
mails I want to delete.

On the whole I'm happy with MEPIS 3.3.1, though I would recommend folks 
stick to the non-testing version, 3.3, unless they enjoy being 
beta-testers, since 3.3.1 is a little buggy in places.  I've accumulated 
a little list of about a half dozen or so bugs that I'd like to report, 
but the folks on the mepislovers IRC channel seemed to think that I 
should email the list to Warren Woodford himself, since the developers' 
list is in abeyance.  I am hesitant to bug the guy, so to speak, with my 
niggling critiques of broken features, though one is sort of a 
show-stopper (sources.list is all wrong, so you can't update until you 
figure out how to fix it; the kind people on the IRC channel sent me the 
fixed file).

Oh, and FWIW, 3.3.1 does not use the 2.6.11 kernel, as Bruce Coston 
surmised:

ed at 2[~]$ uname -a
Linux barpis 2.6.10 #1 Wed Feb 23 16:54:53 EST 2005 i686 GNU/Linux

Regards,

Ed