How to empty default email account

From the shell, you can go to:

/home/cpanel_user/mail/

… and delete the contents of the cur and new folders at the top level.

 

Or, go to the file, lets say the "inbox" and run:

Code:

echo -n > inbox

Above command will empty file but not delete it. Will also preserve permissions etc.

 

True, but for someone not used to using the command line its a lot safer than using rm -f command.

 

You may find ConfigServer Mail Manage a lot easier if you lack command line experience

 

In the past to resolve this kind of issue, i created a script to clean all mailqueue, with some adjustment you can use the same.

#!/usr/bin/perl

my $date = `date`;
chomp $date;

open (LOG, ">>/root/scripts/resetmailqueue.log") || die "Falha ao abrir arquivo ::$!";

print LOG "$date - Apagando fila de mensagens do Exim.......";

if(!system("rm -d -f /var/spool/exim/input/*/*")){
print LOG "[Ok]\n";
}else{
print LOG"[Erro]\n";
}
close (LOG);

 

Old thread I know, and long time no post sorry.

Been moving some very old accounts to my newest array of servers, evidently these accounts were configured in the beginning (not by me) to save everything in the default e-mail address. The one I am working on is 18G.

I too get the bash: /bin/rm: Argument list too long message

ls and dir just set there wondering how they are going to display 18G of files then starts rattling off numbers.
There are several prefixes, all just numbers. There are a lot of each prefix so the command where you put in the prefix could never delete them all.

I probably have about 40 accounts in this condition, ones I assumed from another host who went out of business.

This isn't critical but as root you think you would be able to execute one command and wipe everything out or with google you would be able to find the magic command that would clear the entire directory.

Any new thoughts on this?
Thanks-

 

And experimenting on a home server moments later I find the magic.

Make sure you are IN the directory you want to delete.

find . -type f -print -delete

This will show them to you as it zaps them and takes A LOT LESS TIME than find . -type f -exec rm -v {} \;

In short evidently find has rm built in as -delete

I accept no responsibility for people destroying their entire servers executing commands from my post, please shell responsibly