When a message is delivered into the Sun Message Store, a reference pointing to the stored message is created in the Inbox of each of the message recipients. As each recipient reads, deletes, and removes (expunges) the message via their respective mail clients, the associated reference to the message is removed. When all references are removed or expired (see "Deleting Old Messages" on page 241), the message can be purged from the Sun Message Store.
Purge messages by manually executing the impurge command (see the SIMS Reference Manual) or by using the Admin Console to automatically run impurge.
Note - Do not wait until your disk is full before doing a message purge. Run a message purge while there is more empty disk space than the amount of space used by the mail store on its busiest 24 hour period. You can roughly calculate mail store disk usage by noting the disk usage increase on the /var/opt/SUNWmail/ims partition over a 24 hour period. If your message purge fails due to lack of disk space, refer to "Message Purge Failure" on page 255.
For additional information on Sun Message Store maintenance, including purge, refer to "Sun Message Store Maintenance" on page 233.