Re: [Evolution] How can I limit the amount of cache evolution is using?

[Milan Crha <mcrha redhat com>]

On Thu, 2016-03-03 at 21:50 +0000, Fabrice Triboix wrote:
> The "Synchronize remote mail locally" option is not enabled.
> It's an IMAP account, with gigabytes of emails. But I don't want
> evolution to download all of that locally.

        Hi,
Pete is correct, evolution doesn't download messages locally without
purpose. It does cache folder content in some minimal form, to be able
to fill the message list with usable data, but the whole messages are
not downloaded.

I would check whether it's the folder summary which takes so much disk
space, or the messages are truly downloaded. As you know how much disk
space is used, I suppose you know where to look. Just in case, it's
under ~/.cache/evolution/mail/<imap-account-uid>/. The folder summary
is stored in a folders.db file, while the cache itself is in subfolders
there.

One option would be message filters and junk filtering. Some filter
rules may require full message download, that can be for example when
you filter on headers which are not part of the message list. The junk
filtering requires whole message content to make correct matches for
spam or ham.

Of course, when you view a message it's downloaded and stored in the
cache. There used to be no delete interval for the cache in the past,
but since some version, definitely 3.20.0, the cache for folders which
are not marked for offline usage (there is a global option Pete talked
about, but also a per-folder option) is periodically cleaned (longer
unseen messages are deleted from the cache to free local disk space).
        Bye,
        Milan