Re: [Evolution] Fast way to empty trash?

[Patrick O'Callaghan <poc usb ve>]

On Fri, 2013-02-22 at 20:32 +0000, Ben Holness wrote:
> On Fri, 22 Feb 2013 15:06:46 -0430, Patrick O'Callaghan <poc usb ve> wrote:
> > On Fri, 2013-02-22 at 19:04 +0000, Ben Holness wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > I have an evolution install (3.2.3) with about 200,000 messages in the
> > > trash.
> > >
> > > When I hit empty trash, it starts working and at the bottom (where you
> > > get
> > > the "generating list" and "sending message" information boxes), it
> starts
> > > showing that it is "Retrieving message '[message id]' in inbox"
> > >
> > > Each one of these lasts around a second before the next one is shown.
> > >
> > > By my calculations, it will take two and a half days to get through them
> > > all and I don't even know if it is emptying them or just preparing and
> > > then
> > > it has more to do.
> > >
> > > Is there a quick way to empty the trash, or a way to empty a few
> messages
> > > at a time?
> >
> > Since you don't say where the Trash is (IMAP server, local mbox, local
> > Maildir, Exchange, ...) there's no way to give a sensible answer to that
> > question. That's because trash is handled differently on different
> > scenarios, e.g. on an IMAP server there is no Trash folder (it's a
> > virtual folder) so emptying it means the server has to visit all the
> > folders with messages marked for deletion and expunge them.
> >
> > Also: don't forget to say what version of Evo you have (Help->About).
>
> I think it's local Maildir (if I look in
> ~/.local/share/evolution/mail/local I see cur, new and tmp folders).

You'd see those anyway on pretty much any Evo 3.x installation, because
that's where On This Computer mails is stored (i.e. from POP accounts).
But you might easily have other accounts which only store index
information, such as IMAP as I said.

For local Maildir, there are probably Perl scripts out there to clean up
deleted messages (i.e. empty trash, or expunge mail). Not specifically
for Evo but general-purpose Maildir munging. Before applying such a
thing, make sure Evo is *not running*, i.e. do "evolution
--force-shutdown".

However your original message states that each deletion is taking a long
time. That's what made me think you might be talking about server-side
folders, but only you can clear up this point.

> Evo
> Version 3.2.3 (as I said above ;) ). I am running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and it's
> what was installed when I apt-get installed it.

Sorry, I missed that.

poc