Re: [exim] Archiving Email

Sander Smeenk wrote:
> Quoting Joseph (lists@???):
>
>> With flat files, your friend would be grep. With maildir you would need
>> a mail client, which might be ok, unless we are talking hundreds of
>> thousands of messages.
>
> Thing is, to get a specific message i have to know the exact maildir
> filename or i have to untar the complete archive and go from there...
> Which isn't all that bad if you are talking about your private mailsetup
> with a couple of mailinglists, but company wide this can be a real pain.
>
> With mbox format you can usually just zless or zgrep through the gzipped
> mbox. Even cooler, mutt is able to read gzipped mboxes!. Mbox can easily
> be searched through with numerous tools from the cli too...
>
> So i'd say... Go for mbox format :-)
>

Thanks for all the comments.

The format I am using is neither maildir or mbox, but just plain files.
Which means I have to use grep to do anything with them.

One thing that bothers me, is how I would get to the attachments, if
need be. A person would need a perl mime tool or something to break them
out.

I like the idea of tar'ing them up every day or week and saving the disk
space.

I always have been leery of mbox, because if it gets corrupted, than you
are in trouble although that should not really happen with todays file
systems.

regards, Joseph