[Mailman-Users] Exporting archives to a text file

[Mark Sapiro]

Patricia A Moss wrote:
>
>This system has been in place for quite a number of years. I am running 
>out of space and don't have the option to upgrade my hardware. I would 
>like to move the very old archives off of the server and into a text file, 
>or perhaps a pdf, to clear space on my server.


There already is a plain text mbox format archive at
archives/private/LISTNAME.mbox/LISTNAME.mbox that contains the entire
list archive.

Let's say this contains 10,000 messages for SOMELIST and you would like
to keep the pipermail archive for only the more recent half. You have
two choices. If you want to preserve the URLs for those messages you
are keeping in the Pipermail archive, simple delete the older
archives/private/SOMELIST/xxx periodic directories. The drawback of
this approach is the deleted entries will still be in the TOC, and
will return even if you edit the TOC and remove them.

If you don't care about preserving URLs, you could instead do

  bin/arch --wipe --start=5000 SOMELIST

to rebuild the Pipermail archive skipping the first 5000 messages.


>I can not just delete the older archives. The clients that use the mailman 
>lists want to be able to see/read the older archives, for reference 
>purposes; hence the need for a text or pdf file.


The file is there. It can be accessed via the private archive URL like

http://www.example.com/mailman/private/LISTNAME.mbox/LISTNAME.mbox

whether the archive is private or public, but this requires
authentication as a list member. You can make it accessible for a
public (or private) archive via a link on the TOC by putting

PUBLIC_MBOX = Yes

in mm_cfg.py.


I don't know how any of this will impact namazu. Of course any search
engine could find older messages in the LISTNAME.mbox file, but you
already know all messages are there. The users could just visit the
file in their browsers and use their browser search capabilities to
find what they're looking for.

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