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What is the best way to go about cleaning up old PMs, notifications et al. in the PM system.

I have about 3700 members and have already done the "voluntary" request to clean up old PMs...

Looking throught the pm_xxx directories, it is clear that there are tons of old PMs that need to go.... (files that haven't changed dates since migration to current server).

My concern is this... I have a file handle limit on my site of 60,000. I am currently at 52K+... I don't want old PM crap unnecessarily using up my increasingly valuable remaining file handles.... or whatever term you want to give file count.

Unfortunately, I don't currently have shell access to the board site and will need to do whatever I do via FTP.

The PM cleanup will be done after I do a valid email checkup, and an inactive member purge...

Sure would appreciate some guidance here... I don't want to do something that will toast the install...

I'm assuming that I could use a procedure similar to the following:

-Set a prune date... in this case 11/15/03
-Shut the board down.
-Delete all files in pm_notify with date of 11/15/03 or prior.
-Delete all files in pm_users with date of 11/15/03 or prior
-Delete all files in the A, B, C.... subdirectories under pm_topics with date of 11/15/03 or prior (a long and tedious job)

Leave the pm_buddy and pm_ignore directories alone... as well as the pm_info (since it is just registering the incrementing count stuff).

Would I need to rebuild the metadata and/or indexes? Which ones?

It'd be really cool if there were a CP routine that could do this for us...

I could get about 15,000 file handles back by cleaning out the old PMs... Hate to do it, but need the resources... and I don't feel the PM system should be used to archive stuff...

Am I headed in the right direction? What am I missing/forgetting?

Thanks!

You have the general idea, yes.

While there are no tools that will prune old PMs, we do have a rebuild utility that is designed to restore corrupted PM indexes.

The code is very basic, but it should be easy to modify it to delete PM files that are no longer indexed rather than simply ignore them.

This code is entirely unsupported by Infopop. No guarantees. It may well end up turning your UBB into strawberry jam.

If you'd like to get your hands on it, please open up a support ticket and include the URL to this topic and a request to assign the ticket to me in the message body.

Thanks Charles.... I'm a little concerned about the PM indexing now.... I'm not sure I have seen where/how that works...

I have no problem getting rid of the files, but I don't want to screw up the indexing by doing so...

I am also now wondering about the two different numbers in the files in pm_info.... pm_last_number obviously holds the marker for the last used file nimber for the PM "00021384"

But I am wondering what the pm_counter is for... When it says like "51246"... What does that mean... Is that the total historical number of PMs sent, number present, or what...

If I use the procedure I outlined above (assuming I do it carefully and completely), am I going to cause a problem with accessing the remaining PMs?

I'm finally upgraded to 6.7.0 and getting ready to prune the PMs....

I'm still concerned about the pm_counter.cgi file value.... What does that number mean? I see that it has today's date... but am wondering if one of the metadata processes updates it, or what.

I can delete all the right files in pm_notify, topics, and users no prob...

I just want to make sure what's left is still readable...