[Mailman-Users] Problem after bin/arch'ing

[Mark Sapiro]

Ronny Raschkowan <ronny at kopfrechnung.de> wrote:

>Mark Sapiro wrote:
>
>>Ronny Raschkowan wrote:
>>  
>>
>>>This is really strange.. But I need the normal numeration back.
>>>
>>>    
>>>
>>
>>If I understand correctly that the new numbers are 3363 less than the
>>old numbers, you could always add 3633 dummy messages to the beginning
>>of the .mbox file and then
>>   bin/arch --wipe [listname]
>>
>>I think at most you need
>>
>>  From e-mail date
>>  From: e-mail
>>  Date: date
>>  Subject: a subject
>>
>>  one line of body
>>
>>The date in the initial From line has a specific format which is
>>  Day Mon dd hh:mm:ss yyyy
>>e.g.
>>  From msapiro at value.net  Mon Jan 15 08:45:41 2001
>>
>>--
>>Mark Sapiro <msapiro at value.net>       The highway is for gamblers,
>>San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan
>>
>>
>>
>>  
>>
>Hi.
>
>Could you provid me an exact dummy mail how it would look? I fear i'd do 
>sth wrong., so i would like to see an example.
>
>As far, i don't figure out how i should add it 3633 times? - Doesn't it 
>take a bit long to do that? :-)
>Oh - And should i delete the mylist (not .mbox) directory before editing 
>the .mbox?
>
>Isn't there any "softer" way to do that..?
>
>Sincerly yours,
>Ronny
>

After some additional thought, I think you should look for a backup of
your listname.mbox file from before you edited it to see if perhaps
the 3633 messages at the beginning of the file were lost somehow in
the editing process that you initially did. If you can find a backup,
even if it is old, and it has messages at the beginning that the
current .mbox doesn't have, you might be able to reconstruct the full
.mbox file.

Also, I'm still not completely clear that you did run bin/arch with the
--wipe option. If you didn't, then you added more messages which
duplicate old messages, but this doesn't seem to be the result you
report so I *think* you must have used --wipe.

You don't delete the "mylist" directory before editing .mbox. when you
run "bin/arch --wipe mylist" it rebuilds all the files in
archives/private/mylist from archives/private/mylist.mbox/mylist.mbox
so it's not necessary to delete anything first, that's what --wipe is
for.

If you actually want to create 3363 dummy entries, consider the
following c program --

#include <stdio.h>
main() {
  int i;
  for (i=0; i<3363; ++i) {
    printf("From placeholder at nowhere.com  Mon Jan  1 12:00:00 1990\n");
    printf("From: placeholder at nowhere.com\n");
    printf("Date: Mon, 01 Jan 1990 12:00:00\n");
    printf("Subject: Place Holder Message\n\n");
    printf("Not a real message.\n\n");
  }
}


Compile it and run it, redirecting standard output to a file and then
put the file at the beginning of the .mbox or do some equivalent
process in some other language.

It produces

>From placeholder at nowhere.com  Mon Jan  1 12:00:00 1990
From: placeholder at nowhere.com
Date: Mon, 01 Jan 1990 12:00:00
Subject: Place Holder Message

Not a real message.

>From placeholder at nowhere.com  Mon Jan  1 12:00:00 1990
From: placeholder at nowhere.com
Date: Mon, 01 Jan 1990 12:00:00
Subject: Place Holder Message

Not a real message.

for a total of 3363 repetitions.

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