Public bug reported:

Getmail is expected to delete messages older than 90 days under this
configuration:

---8<--------------------
[options]
verbose = 0
message_log = ~/logs/getmail.log
message_log_verbose = true
delete_after = 90
max_messages_per_session=10

[retriever]
type=SimplePOP3SSLRetriever
server=pop.mail.yahoo.com
port=995
[email protected]
password=yadayada

[destination]
type = Mboxrd
path = ~/mail/yahoo.mbox
---8<--------------------

It fetched the first ten msgs from a box containing 10s of thousands of
msgs, dating back 7 years ago.  The resulting mbox file contained 9
messages dated 2013-2014, and 1 message with no "Date:" field.  Then
getmail was called again.  The same 10 messages were fetched again and
were also delivered to ~/mail/yahoo.mbox, so the mbox file contained 10
duplicates.  The log file also indicates that the same 10 messages were
fetched and the msg id's each appeared twice.

I don't know if getmail supports UIDL and whether it attempts to avoid
fetching dupes, but certainly at least 9 of the messages should have
been deleted from the server on the 1st session, and thus should not
have even been available from the server thereafter.

Some badly acting POP3 servers will ignore delete requests because they
want users to see ads on their web UI.  So in order to rule out that
possibility fetchmail was run with this config:

---8<--------------------
skip yahoo via pop.mail.yahoo.com
  protocol   pop3
  port       995
  uidl
  username   [email protected]
  password   yadayada
  fetchlimit 10
  fetchall
  ssl
---8<--------------------

Fetchmail has no "delete_after" capability, but its default behavior is
to delete every msg fetched from the server.  And it did.  Fetchmail
grabbed the same 10 msgs that getmail fetched since they were still on
the server after 2 getmail retrievals, then fetchmail deleted them from
the server unconditionally.  Then getmail was run for a 3rd time, and
this time it fetched a different 10 messages, thus proving that
fetchmail was able to delete the messages.

I hope it doesn't bother anyone that this is reported here despite the
bug not being tested on Ubuntu.  There is no upstream bug tracker and
since it's not a security bug I prefer having the bug tracked and open
to public feedback.

** Affects: getmail (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1908557

Title:
  getmail's "delete_after" does not delete msgs from Yahoo server

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