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As a result of a long-running cron job, I have over 1,000 messages in my user's mailbox. What's the easiest way to delete them?

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90

If you want to delete all the messages, you can simply truncate the mailbox file for a user with the following command:

> /var/mail/username

(the greater than sign is not a prompt: you are in effect redirecting the output of nothing to the file, which will truncate it).

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8

Run mail in a terminal. Press d 1-. This will delete those messages.

Removing files for managing mail is like adjust the volume of your tv with a hammer. It may work, but it is not optimal and far too brutal.

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  • This is the correct answer. It also allows deleting just some emails, if it's unclear from the command. E.g. d 1-100 will delete the first 100 email messages. – texnic May 20 '17 at 7:19
  • I had to install mailutils and then use d * on Ubuntu 12.04 – Leslie Viljoen Jul 22 '19 at 3:19
2

I would argue that you rarely want to delete everything from the mail.

Therefore I would recommend setting up a crontask to run weekly to keep the last 100 lines of each user's mail

cat /var/mail/username | tail -100 > /var/mail/username

this will keep the last 100 lines

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  • 5
    This is not a good solution. You risk truncating the file in the middle of a message. The default format for /var/mail/user is simply a file with consecutive emails. If you for instance truncate a mime-message in the middle, it's invalid. Use tools like mail for mananging mail spools - or delete all of it with the > /var/mail/username trick. – vidarlo May 20 '17 at 14:10
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It depends if you have ftp access. If so, just use Nautilus to do a good deal more than any other ftp client. I also use it and Bluefish to edit pages on my websites.

There should be a Mail folder where you can view and delete any and all files.

I find it so much easier than File Manager in cPanel.

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  • 2
    You make a lot of assumptions here - like cPanel, ftp access and so on. What do you base these on? – vidarlo May 20 '17 at 14:11

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