Amateur needs help with simple Cron job

[Dortro]

Hello, my name is Robert and I am new to this forum.

I need some help with a simple Cron job to empty the inbox of one if my email users, please

my domain name is: domain.com
The email user us: [email protected]

this is the cron job I found to run every day to remove emails older than 7 days from the inbox:

/usr/bin/archivemail--quiet--delete--days 7 /home/nxsckg42kptp/mail/domain.com/test/inbox

nxsckg42kptp is the current user id of my cpanel account

Is this correct? It does not seem to work…


Thanks

 

[cPRex]

Hey there! I wouldn't expect this to work as a default cPanel server does not have the /usr/bin/archivemail tool installed. Was that tool installed on your server?

If I were doing something like this I would create a Bash script inside a file that searches for emails based on the timestamp, and then ensure that tuns every night. The following script can be potentially dangerous, so please use this with caution:

find /home/username/mail/domain.com/emailuser/cur/ -type f -mtime +7 | xargs rm -rf

 

[Dortro]

Thank you cPRex!

I do not think that tool is installed (don’t even know what it is)

so, can I just replace the script in my Cron Job, which runs daily, with yours:

find /home/username/mail/domain.com/emailuser/cur/ -type f -mtime +7 | xargs rm -rf

With user name the cpa el current user identifyer, domain.com my domain, emailuser test ( in my case)? What is cur?

Maybe another stupid question: Inbox is nowhere mentioned, is that ok?

Thanks,
Robert

 

[cPRex]

You wouldn't be able to place that directly in the cron. You would want to create a file on the server named email_cron.sh, place that line of code in it, save the file, make it executable, and then setup this cron job:

/bin/bash /home/username/email_cron.sh

 

[Dortro]

Ok, I will figure out how to do that (create a file, make it executable…)

How about this /cur/?

Thanks and best regards,
Robert

 

[cPRex]

I'm not sure what you mean in relation to the /cur/ portion - can you get me more details?

 

[Dortro]

Sure!

In your script :

find /home/username/mail/domain.com/emailuser/cur/ -type f -mtime +7 | xargs rm -rf

There are a number of things I think I understand:

username: the cpanel identifier for the account. In my case nxsckg42kptp/

domain.com: in my case domain.com

emailuser: in my case test (the emai address is [email protected])

following that you have:
/cur/
I do not know what that is/what I have to put there!

As I said, I am completely new To all this. I do not need to learn a lot, I just hope to get this one thing (deleting emails older than x days from [email protected]’s inox)

sorry!

Robert

 

[cPRex]

The /cur directory is the physical location of the emails on the server. That would be more or less equivalent to the user's inbox.

If you wanted to check all directories under the email account you could just stop the path after the email user like this:

 find /home/username/mail/domain.com/emailuser/ -type f -mtime +7 | xargs rm -rf

and that would erase everything from the email account older than 7 days.

 

[Dortro]

Top!!

 

[Dortro]

Dear CPrex
Through cPanel File Mager v3, I created email_cron.sh;
Through edit, I entered and saved
find/home/nxsckg42kptp/mail/vandortmond.com/ test/ -type f mtime +7
The permission of the file is 0644 (??is this ok?)
I entered the cron job
/bin/bash/home/nxsckg42kptp/email_cron.sh

That should do it?

Thanks!

 

[Dortro]

My Cron Job ran for the first time, and indeed: amateur!

This the message I got:

/usr/local/cpanel/bin/jailshell: /bin/bash/home/nxsckg42kptp/email_cron.sh: Not a directory

Can you pls help one more time? It must now be something small…

Thanks!!

 

[cPRex]

It looks like you're just missing a space in the cron job formatting after the "/bin/bash" portion. Can you try adding that space?

 

[Dortro]

Did that! Will see tomorrow!
Thanks,
Robert

 

[cPRex]

You could also temporarily change the time to something else, like * * * * * to make it run every minute to confirm it works, so you don't have to wait 24 hours.

 

[Dortro]

Permissions for email_cron.sh : 0644. Ok?

 

[cPRex]

You'll likely find it needs to be 755 in order to execute properly.

 

[Dortro]

Changed to every minute…

 

[Dortro]

This is the result now:

find: paths must precede expression: mtime
Usage: find [-H] [-L] [-P] [-Olevel] [-D help|tree|search|stat|rates|opt|exec] [path...] [expressio

 

[cPRex]

In your command it looks like you have an extra "test/" section there:

find /home/nxsckg42kptp/mail/vandortmond.com/ test/ -type f mtime +7

so that would be confusing find's search location.

 

[Dortro]

The email account is [email protected], where you line said /email user/, I have put /test/