Re: expiring old messages

From: Craig A Summerhill <craig_at_cni.org_at_hypermail-project.org>
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 1999 02:59:18 -0500 (EST)
Message-Id: <9903170759.AA25089_at_a.cni.org>

On Tue, 16 Mar 1999, Eric Kimminau <eak_at_detroit.sgi.com> wrote:
>
> Is there a way to do something like, say, delete or archive all
> messages more than 12 months old, or a better way to re-index .html
> files than:
>
> whack all the old stuff
> convert *.html to mbox file
> rm *.html
> convert mbox to .html

Well, don't throw away the old mbox files when you're done converting them into HTML.

The raw text doesn't take that much disk space - I've got nearly ten years worth of archives from some 300 lists (currently 300, there are only about 10 or 12 that run back the full decade) stored in about 300 MB of disk. The mbox files are broken into directories for each list and files for monthly segments of the archive.

Then, when I want to reindex, I use a .hmrc file which has:

   hm_overwrite = "1"

There is a front-end script which (a) runs manually or from the crontab, (b) concatenates monthly mbox files into a temporary work file (quarterly or annually -- based upon the volume of mail in the list), (c) runs hypermail against the temporary work file, and (d) uses the '-d' flag to direct the output to a target directory in my web tree.

If you only want to make the last 12 months (or some other number) of the archives available, do something like the above and put a routine in before step (b) checks the date and calculates how many months of mbox files to concatenate into a temporary file...

-- 

   Craig A. Summerhill, Systems Coordinator and Program Officer
   Coalition for Networked Information
   21 Dupont Circle, N.W., Washington, D.C.   20036
   Internet: craig_at_cni.org   AT&Tnet (202) 296-5098

Received on Wed 17 Mar 1999 10:05:40 AM GMT