Delayed Expunge
***************

When a user or IMAP client expunges a message or an entire folder,
messages become unavailable to the user.

When the deletion is accidental, administrators may have to recover
the messages from some place. When the messages are purposefully
deleted, the user may have done so not with the best of intentions.

In any case, the time between a message arriving and being deleted may
not be sufficient to ensure the message is replicated, included in the
next backup cycle, and generally available for recovery or compliance
with the regulatory environment.

Cyrus IMAP introduces *delayed expunge*, which ensures message files
are not immediately unlinked from the filesystem, and instead makes
purging the message files from the filesystem a separate event.

This enables administrators to quickly recover access to messages that
have been accidentally deleted, as well as allows the environment to
ensure messages remain available for inclusion in the next backup
cycle.


Configuring Cyrus IMAP for Delayed Expunge
==========================================

To enable or disable Delayed Expunge, please check the following
settings in imapd.conf(5).

      "expunge_mode:" delayed

         The mode in which messages (and their corresponding cache
         entries) are expunged.  “semidelayed” mode is the old
         behavior in which the message files are purged at the time of
         the EXPUNGE, but index and cache records are retained to
         facilitate QRESYNC. In “delayed” mode, which is the default
         since Cyrus 2.5.0, the message files are also retained,
         allowing unexpunge to rescue them.  In “immediate” mode, both
         the message files and the index records are removed as soon
         as possible.  In all cases, nothing will be finally purged
         until all other processes have closed the mailbox to ensure
         they never see data disappear under them.  In “semidelayed”
         or “delayed” mode, a later run of “cyr_expire” will clean out
         the retained records (and possibly message files). This
         reduces the amount of I/O that takes place at the time of
         EXPUNGE and should result in greater responsiveness for the
         client, especially when expunging a large number of messages.
         Allowed values: *immediate*, *semidelayed*, *delayed*

See also:

  * unexpunge

  * Delayed Delete

  * When is What … Deleted, Expired, Expunged or Purged?

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