Larry Johnson wrote:

What is the role of the *.mbox files in the archives? What would the effect be of removing one? Of editing one (and removing older messages)? They seem to grow continually. What is best practice for managing them? ---------------- End original message. ---------------------

The mbox files are where the messages used to build the archive HTML files reside.

If you remove them or edit them, you would not be able to rebuild your archives the way they are if you ever had a need to do so.

Dragon

  Venimus, Saltavimus, Bibimus (et naribus canium capti sumus)

On Wed, 2006-09-27 at 15:29 -0400, Larry Johnson wrote:

I asked a similar question to this earlier (involving the g'zipped files in the archives). I inherited administration of a mailman system (I'm a solaris sysadmin) and have been trying to figure out the role of the various files in the archives, so that I know what I can clean out for space saving purposes.

What is the role of the *.mbox files in the archives? What would the effect be of removing one? Of editing one (and removing older messages)? They seem to grow continually. What is best practice for managing them?

The mbox files are the raw messages used to rebuild the html archive files. There are patches available to make them easier to manage, look for "Daily mbox files" here: http://www.openinfo.co.uk/mm/index.html

I have a FAQ entry that describes what to do to disable access to the mbox/txt files here: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq04.066.htp

-Jim P.