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Inactive email users

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6 replies

by cjcknight

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We have a red hat linux 7.1 server which acts as an email server. Is there a way to track down users who have been inactive for 3 to 4 months. Inactive means that he has not yet opened his mail box for the past 3 to 4 months since the last he openedit. Does this need extra scripting to accomplish this?

Could anyone help regarding this matter. Thanks in advance.

Clem

6 replies

by gigelul

Hi,
I'm not very experienced in Linux but we have a Linux box and in - var\logs\mailog - exist all records about users logon/logoff. You can take a copy of this file in Excell and with some filters or sortings you can obtain this information.

by cactus pete

The maillog file is likeyl being rotated weekly, such that maillog.4 goes back one month, and there are no more. You can, of course, change this..

But what may be easiest is to 'head' each file under /var/mail and see just how old the first mailis. Scripting this is possible, but I would give you this warning:

Use the script for reporting only. Have the decision about the report's output made by a human, with an attempt to contact the user in question. Some email packages allow you to leave a copy on the server, even after downloading the mail. This setting would fool the script, quite easily. Then you could just educate the user a bit about the proper way to set up their client.

Also, an script deleting anything is almost always a bad idea...

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