Bulk delete old emails in cPanel

Another handy script that I originally created in 2014, but updated to perform some sanity checks. This script will check for all files older than x months, or just targeting the junk emails, and permanently delete these emails.

#!/bin/sh

####################################################################
#                                                                  #
#  DELETE OLD EMAILS                                               #
#                                                                  #
#  Coded by Noah Hearle, Design Extreme                            #
#  https://designextreme.com                                       #
#                                                                  #
#  Created: 2014/03/29                                             #
#  Modified: 2021/10/14                                            #
#                                                                  #
#  Delete old emails for particular users or all users             #
#                                                                  #
#  Post your comments at:                                          #
#  https://blog.nahoo.co.uk/cpanel-delete-old-emails/          #
#                                                                  #
#  Usage: sh ./delete_old_emails.sh     #
#                                                                  #
####################################################################

user=$1
age=$2
junk=$3
this=$(readlink -f $0)

if [ ! -n "$user" ] && ! [[ "$age" =~ ^[0-9]+$ ]]; then
        echo -e "\e[38;5;202mError:\e[0m Please enter the user and the age in months"
        echo 'Usage: sh ./delete_old_emails.sh   '
        exit
fi

if [ ! -n "$user" ]; then
        echo -e "\e[38;5;202mError:\e[0m Please enter the user"
        echo 'Usage: sh ./delete_old_emails.sh   '
        exit
fi

if  ! [[ "$age" =~ ^[0-9]+$ ]]; then
        echo -e "\e[38;5;202mError:\e[0m Please enter the age in months"
        echo 'Usage: sh ./delete_old_emails.sh   '
        exit
fi

if  [ "$age" -lt 2 ]; then
        echo -e "\e[38;5;202mError:\e[0m Please enter an age of 2 or more months"
        echo 'Usage: sh ./delete_old_emails.sh   '
        exit
fi

if [[ "$user" == '*' ]] || [[ "$user" == 'all' ]]; then
        for directory in $(getent passwd | cut -d: -f6); do
                user=$(sed -r 's#^/home/([^/]+)/?.*$#\1#' <<< $directory)
                if [ ! -f "/var/cpanel/users/$user" ]; then
                        continue;
                fi

                sh $this $user $age $junk
        done
        exit
fi

if [ ! -f "/var/cpanel/users/$user" ]; then
        echo -e "\e[38;5;202mError:\e[0m The user: $user doesn’t exist"
        exit
fi

cd /home/

if [ -n "$junk" ]; then
        find -P /home/$user/mail/*/*/\.{Junk,spam}/* -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -mtime +$(($age * 31)) -delete
        echo -e "\e[38;5;118mSuccess:\e[0m Removed old junk emails for user: \e[1m$user\e[0m older than $age months"
        exit
fi

find -P /home/$user/mail/*/*/* -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -mtime +$(($age * 31)) -delete
echo -e "\e[38;5;118mSuccess:\e[0m Removed old emails for user: \e[1m$user\e[0m older than $age months"

To run this, just check within the code as examples are given here:

sh ./delete_old_emails.sh <user> <age in months> <junk>

Having the user set to all or * will run it for all users on the server. The third argument just needs to exist for it to target junk.

Last updated on Friday, 15th October 2021