[Mailman-Users] Removing archived spam

[Hal]

On 12/11/17 00:19, Mark Sapiro wrote:
> On 11/11/2017 02:28 PM, Hal via Mailman-Users wrote:

>> unfortunately I'm unable to access that location ("permission denied")
>> for some reason,
> 
> It is not uncommon for /var/lib/mailman/archives/private/ to not be
> readable/searchable by other than the web server user or Mailman's group.
> 
> Whatever is done, needs to be done by someone with write access to that
> directory.

Would adding me as a member to the Mailman group be the "safest" option?
Safest meaning that the web-server owner not having to risk me messing 
up the whole server or something, while still letting me do cleanup work 
(or anything else related to the list configuration etc)?



>> so I'm contacting the server owner about that. But
>> several years ago I did a lot of work cleaning up and importing archived
>> messages from before I moved over to Mailman and made backups of said
>> directory and it seems I have two main directories:
>>
>> /var/lib/mailman/archives_BACKUP/private/LISTNAME/
>> and
>> /var/lib/mailman/archives_BACKUP/private/LISTNAME.mbox/
> 
> 
> That's correct, but of course the back ups would not have any more
> recent posts.

Yes, true.
But being able to access those backups gave me some insight in the 
file/folder structure.
I'll be sure to make backups of everything before messing around with 
the new postings as well.



> 
>> The "LISTNAME.mbox/" directory contains a single "LISTNAME.mbox" file
>> while the "LISTNAME/" directory contains a variety of files and
>> sub-directories by month. I suppose I have to clean things up in both of
>> those paths?
> 
> That depends. The easiest way to do it completely and correctly is to
> edit the LISTNAME.mbox/LISTNAME.mbox file and replace the spam bodies
> with "spam removed" or some such text and similarly for the Subject:
> headers, but leave the edited messages there so messages aren't
> renumbered when you do the next step.

Excellent suggestion!
Does this apply even if say October only contains one posting, which is 
spam? Would that mess up the next month's postings (if any)?


> 
> Then rebuild the archives in the LISTNAME/ directory with Mailman's
> 
> bin/arch --wipe LISTNAME
> 
> (Mailman's bin/arch is what Dimitri referred to as mmarch)
> 
> You might review this entire thread beginning at
> <https://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2017-November/082712.html>
> including
> <https://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2017-November/082722.html>
> which refers you to <https://wiki.list.org/x/4030681> which discusses
> all the options in detail.

Thanks. Just what I needed.
I see it's well explained, but I'll probably read it through a few times 
before attempting to do this due to the complexity.

I read about the Mailman 3 development and I'm wondering if chances are 
that it'll ever become a matter of "point & click" to maintain such a 
mailing list, or will there always be the need to "deep dive" with UNIX 
commands and other complexities?


Hal