You can just delete files, but surgemail will limit the number it shows 
to the user so as long as the total is still above that number it will 
keep showing the same number.

You can increase the number using these settings.

There is a pop limit:
     g_maildir_max "30000"
and an imap limit:
     G_IMAP_MAX_MESSAGES "200000"
(those are the defaults)

Rather than increasing those settings which will just make the user 
experience even worse as their email client has to keep scanning the 
same messages every day, and your server's load worse...  it's much 
better to tidy up the accounts with settings like:
     g_inbox_archive "365"
     g_sent_archive "365"
(or smaller, 90 days might be reasonable)
Which will archive messages older than 1 year to sub folders, 
Archives/YYYY/Inbox etc...

So the messages still exist, but won't be wasting resources every login.


     ChrisP.

On 23/08/2016 5:48 a.m., surgemailHIDDEN@etwinsite.com wrote:
> i have several customers who use imap and have never deleted anything.
>
> of course, this is my fault fo letting thsi happen, but that's 
> immaterial :-)
>
> i went into the web admin interface and deleted well over 1000 
> messages for one of these customers, and noticed two things:
>
> 1. the number 30001 never changed and
>
> 2. going to the customers mdir/new on the server i saw messages with 
> dates (years) that i thought were deleted
>
> what i'm wondering is, if i do deletes from the linux command line, 
> what file(s), if any, would i need to update manually to keep 
> everything in synch?
>
> david camm
> advanced web systems
> keller, tx
>
>
>
>