cleanup-mastodon-users.sh

Script to remove inactive users on your Mastodon server. This is a small cleanup script for Mastodon node admins to help with forgotten or dead accounts.

The script does two things:

1. delete all users after 2 weeks that haven't logged in at all and didn't post anything.
2. search for accounts that haven't logged in for 6 months, send them a reminder mail, deactivate accounts that haven't logged within 7 months and delete those deactivated users in a --cron run.

Installation

• save the script in home directory of Mastodon (eg. ~/bin, not under /root, maybe /usr/local/bin)
• make the script executable (e.g. chown mastodon:mastodon bin/cleanup-mastodon-users.sh && chmod u+rx bin/cleanup-mastodon-users.sh)
• create a config file at $HOME/.cleanup-mastodon-users.conf by calling the script with --init argument and edit the file to fit your needs
• create a crontab to execute the script, e.g.: 20 8 * * 4 /home/mastodon/bin/cleanup-mastodon-users.sh --dowhatimean to execute the script every week. In the example it is executed every Thursday (4th day of week) at 8:20 in the morning.
• for the first runs you should set UPPERLIMIT to a high number and keep the deleting of the user commented out (${mastodonpath}/bin/tootctl accounts delete "${username}"). After the first few runs you can reduce UPPERLIMIT to a lower setting and repeat this until you reached the final value. You shouldn't have too many weeks between LOWERLIMIT and UPPERLIMIT. Sensible values might be 6 and 7 months or 12 and 13 months or so.
• change the variables at the begin of the script to your site settings.

Usage

Usage:
--init          : create bin/cleanup-mastodon-users.sh/.cleanup-mastodon-users.conf config file.
 --dry-run      : make a dry-run, no deletion will be done, no mails are sent.
 --cron         : delete deactivated users in a regularly cron run step by step to avoid mass flooding.
 --dowhatimean  : add this option if you really want to delete users.

Other useful tips

• test the script by using --dry-run argument with the script
• you can change the mail command from -b ${siteadmin} -- ${usermail} to -- ${siteadmin} and comment out all lines with bin/console user delete statement for testing runs

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