[Mailman-Users] mbox files

[Mark Sapiro]

Paul Tomblin wrote:

>Does the /var/lib/mailman/archives/private/listname.mbox directory have to
>contain just one file, or can I break it up by year or something to make
>them more managable?


It can contain as many files as you want organized however you want,
but the one named listname.mbox is the only one accessable via the
web, and it is the one that new posts are added to.


>I had my mailman lists on my home server, but a few years ago I moved them
>to a virtual private server.  Because the disk space was limited there, I
>started trimming down the listname.mbox files down to just the previous
>two years worth.  But now I've moved them again, this time to a colo box
>where I have more disk space than I know what to do with.  I want to
>restore the old archives.  Can I just dump the old mbox file in the same
>directory as the current archives and do a "arch listname"?  Or will I
>have to run "arch" once for the old file and once for the listname.mbox
>file?


You will need to run

  bin/arch --wipe listname archives/private/listname.mbox/old.mbox

followed by

  bin/arch listname

(which uses listname.mbox/listname.mbox by default). You could actually
do it in the other order, but the --wipe option needs to be on the
first command, or if the existing archives match the existing
listname.mbox, you could just do

  bin/arch listname archives/private/listname.mbox/old.mbox

to add the old ones.

Note that there are pros and cons to all the above having to do with
changing message numbers - hence, changing message URLs - in the
archive which will invalidate saved URLs now or in the future.

See
<http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq01.033.htp>
and
<http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq03.003.htp>
for more on this.


>Will "arch" handle the case where there is a bit of overlap between two
>files (the files from my home system go from 1999 to mid-2005, and the
>ones on my VPS go from the beginning of 2005 to the present)?


Actually, I think it will (i.e. I think it doesn't archive the same
Message-ID: twice), but this may exacerbate any message renumbering
issue.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <msapiro at value.net>       The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan