RFC: Thunderbird, mail.prompt_purge_threshhold=true

[Alexander Sack]

On Tue, Dec 04, 2007 at 09:46:56PM +0100, Thilo Six wrote:
> Hi
> 
> With a recent thread on ML i came again across a problem with Thunderbird
> that i had myself 1 or 2 years ago.
> 
> Thunderbird uses mailbox files to store mails and an aditionally *.msf file
> for meta data of that mbox-file.
> Now when you delete a mail in TB it only disappears in the mail pane but is
> still physically stored on harddisc in the mbox.
> To really delete a mail then s.o. has to "compact" that folder.
> 
> New users (or those not interrested in technic) wont notice that and then the
> profile folder can become very large.
> In the specific thread the OP had mails back from 2005 still in his profile
> which had grown up to 2 gig.
> 2 gig is approximately where we come to filesystem limitations (max size per
> file)
> 
> Now to prevent that i call for commend on change the default of:
> pref("mail.prompt_purge_threshhold", false);
> 
> to
> pref("mail.prompt_purge_threshhold", true);
> 
> that way a user gets a dialog when the threshold (default is 100kB iirc) is
> reached and gets asked to "compact" (read as really physically delete all
> previous in TB deleted mails) that folder.
> 
> 
> I have searched bugzilla.mozilla.org for bugs like that and coulnd´t find
> one. Also on launchpad is no similar bug report it seems.
> 
> So i would like to know is it feasible to solve that somehow?
> 

>From what I know, thunderbird compacts folders automatically for some
time now. It might however be the case that old profiles still rely on
manual compacting.

Are you sure that new profiles are not getting cleaned up
automatically?

 - Alexander