msgcleanup(1)

📦 version 0.15, in debian bookworm, debian trixie, ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

💖 msgcleanup — the manual, but make it cute 💖

okay bestie, this one lives in the AX.25 Mail Utilities family, and it's the friend who does your laundry... except the laundry is old BBS mail and the "tossing it" is deleting it forever. 🧺✨

✨ NAME ✨

msgcleanup — deletes the messages whose lifetime has expired. bye-bye, old mail 🫶

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

msgcleanup <BBS_callsign>

🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

so here's the vibe: this tool goes through all the messages downloaded from the specified BBS and checks their dates. Anything older than the lifetime it's supposed to have? Gone. Deleted. Not coming back. 💀

and the way it knows how long each message is allowed to live? that's per-BBS, and it's written down in the config file /etc/ax25/bulletins.BBS_CALL. lowkey iconic.

Every single line of that file is two things: the name of the bulletin, and its lifetime in days. That's it. Two little pieces of info per line.

Now here's the special one — when the bulletin name is DEFAULT, that lifetime value gets used for all the bulletins that aren't contained in the list. it's giving "catch-all queen" 👑

Example of the configuration file:

# Bulletin lifetimes for BBS in days
DEFAULT 30
MEET 10
LINUX 90

So in this case, fr fr:

  • messages for MEET are stored 10 days
  • messages for LINUX are stored 90 days
  • and all other messages are stored for 30 days

periodt. that's the whole system. 🍓

🦋 FILES 🦋

  • /var/ax25/mail_routes

💜 SEE ALSO 💜

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Radek Burget OK2JBG <radkovo@centrum.cz> — the mastermind, the moment, the whole entire legend 💅

that's the page bestie!! this manual page came from Linux and it's dated 10 September 1999 — so yeah, it's older than most of us, and it still ate. 🌈⭐ mwah, go clean up those bulletins 💖🫶✨

📦 where this page comes from