[Mailman-Users] solved - mailman archives missing but raw text file available

[Andrew Trieger]

Another user had this problem and it was a spam program removing the
>From header field.  note, there are two FROM header fields, there's
From:  which is down in the list of headers a bit, but the first one is
evidently always "From name date"  where date has spaces too.  this is i
guess the mbox format, or part of it anyway.

so my problem was my mailserver is courier and it uses maildir format
for storage.  I found that if i simply added a dummy From line to the
beginning of every message in my archive and reran "arch <listname>" it
would do the right thing and generate all the html.  it doesnt use the
name here or the date, gets them from the Date: header field and Sender:
or From:

anyway, i couldnt figure out how to have courier switch to old mbox
format for just the users for this list, so what i did was to use the
local mail delivery agent already on my mandrake linux box, procmail.

where the aliases normally would be this:

ranches:                     |/usr/local/mailman/mail/wrapper post
ranches
ranches-admin:           |/usr/local/mailman/mail/wrapper mailowner
ranches
ranches-request:         |/usr/local/mailman/mail/wrapper mailcmd
ranches
ranches-owner:           ranches-admin


I had to change it to this:


ranches:                 ranches-dup,ranches-arch
ranches-admin:           |/usr/local/mailman/mail/wrapper mailowner
ranches
ranches-request:         |/usr/local/mailman/mail/wrapper mailcmd
ranches
ranches-owner:           ranches-admin

# used to duplicate where the email goes
ranches-dup:             |/usr/local/mailman/mail/wrapper post ranches
ranches-arch:           |procmail -d ranches-arch


so email to the list goes to ranches (the list name in this case) and it
then is duplicated, one copy continues on to the list where i have
archiving TURNED OFF (but the options for how to build it (yearly,
monthly, etc.) set.   the other copy goes to this new user but is
delivered via procmail.

then i wrote a simple 10 line shell script to check if the mbox file for
this new user was newer than the mailman archive file for this list,
/usr/local/mailman/archives/private/ranches/ranches.mbox/ranches.mbox
if memory serves.

if it was, it cat'd the whole thing into this archive file and ran "arch
ranches" which rebuilt the html pages.

it works now, so thanks to those who gave me hints and i hope this
solution helps others use courier with mailman as they both work pretty
well.

Drew



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