How to really DELETE rmm'ed messages
MH tries to prevent you from accidentally deleting your mail without a way to
recover it.
If you registered for an Athena account after June 1990, you can get rid
of "rmm'd" messages by typing:
expunge -r ~/Mail
If you registered for an account earlier, please follow the instructions
below.
When you use the 'rmm' command, the file containing the message is not
deleted. Rather, its name is changed by adding a '#' sign to the
beginning.
For example, when you type this command:
rmm +inbox 1
MH changes the name of the file
~/Mail/inbox/1
to
~/Mail/inbox/#1
**** These files are NOT removed by the expunger program (which removes
**** deleted files from your account when they are more than 3 days old.)
**** If you do not delete these # files, and allow them to accumulate,
**** you will eventually exceed your quota and risk damaging your more
**** valuable files!
One way is to delete the '#' files manually. Use the 'cd' command to go
into your inbox folder (directory):
cd ~/Mail/inbox
Then, use the following command to remove all files beginning with '#':
rm -i #* <- make sure you use '#*', not just '*'!!
Another option, if you have many folders, is to use the command:
find ~/Mail -name "#*" -ok rm {} \;
which will search all of the folders in your Mail directory for messages
which you have marked for deletion with rmm, and then ask you whether
you want to permanently remove each one.
You will probably want to update your account so that 'rmm' uses 'delete',
and you won't need to go through all these steps. To do so, add the
following line to the file ".mh_profile" in your home directory:
rmmproc: delete
NOTE: make sure it says "rmmproc" and NOT "Rmmproc", or you will not have
changed anything!
After doing this, you'll be able to follow the directions at the beginning
of this answer to really delete your mail. It will also be removed
automatically as the expunger periodically removes deleted files.
If you decide that you will NEVER want to recover a message that you
delete with 'rmm' (we don't recommend this!) you can tell MH to really
delete your messages, rather than renaming them. To do this, add the
following line to your '.mh_profile' file:
rmmproc: /bin/rm
This will permanently delete messages when you use 'rmm'.
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