Maintenance Commands 6-61
Octel 200/300 S.4.1PB60019−01
MPURGE Command Usage
A message that has been recorded and sent can be deleted from one or all mailboxes in the message
server.
From all mailboxes, the MPURGE command first initiates an MBLOCK command so that, while the
message server is searching each mailbox for an occurrence of the message, mailbox holders cannot play
that message.
The search that occurs after the MBLOCK command is issued can take some time to be executed. For
example, on a message server with 1,200 mailboxes, the search takes approximately 1/2 hour. Also,
seconds or even minutes might elapse between the display of the next “mailbox scheduled for deletion”
prompt. When the search has been completed, because the MBLOCK command is issued by the message
server before beginning the message-purge search, the message continues to use the header assigned to it,
and it remains on the disk until the message server is restarted.
When the MPURGE command is issued to delete a message from an individual mailbox, the MBLOCK
command is not evoked. The message is deleted from the mailbox specified. When issued for a particular
mailbox, the MPURGE command is quick to be executed. If a message was sent, for example, to three
mailboxes and purged one mailbox at a time from each of the three, after the final deletion, the message
is deleted from the disk and the header is made available for reuse.
Whether for a single mailbox or for all mailboxes, when the MPURGE command is issued to request that a
message be deleted, if the mailbox holder is logged on, the request to delete is queued, and the deletion
occurs after the mailbox holder logs off.
If the message server is restarted while deletion requests are queued, those queued requests are lost.
However, the message remains unplayable if it has been blocked (explicitly by MBLOCK or implicitly by
the all-mailbox MPURGE command). To verify that messages have been deleted before restarting the
message server, check the trace log.

MPURGE Command for All Mailboxes

To delete a message from every mailbox in the message server,at the @ prompt, enter:
MPURGE x Enter
In this command, xis the message-header number.
DELETE MESSAGE 5001FROM ALL MAILBOXES
ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO DO THIS? Y
MESSAGE 5001SCHEDULED FOR DELETION FROM MAILBOX 2021
MESSAGE 5001SCHEDULED FOR DELETION FROM MAILBOX 2022
.
.
@
The message server searches all mailboxes for the message to be deleted before returning to the @ prompt.
As it searches, the following prompt is displayed each time there is an occurrence of the message:
MESSAGE xxx SCHEDULED FOR DELETION FROM MAILBOX yyy.