[Mailman-Users] question about moving list and archives

[Mark Sapiro]

Christopher Adams wrote:
>
>Yes, you're right about the list.mbox file. This was given to me by
>someone else and I was surprised that the mbox file wasn't included.
>Does this mean that a new mbox file will be created with the next
>post?


Yes, but it will contain only that and subsequent posts. It won't
contain any of the prior posts.


>How do messages append to the archive if there is no mbox file?


The pipermail archives and the .mbox file are independent. What is
maintained as messages are posted depends on the setting of
ARCHIVE_TO_MBOX. Defaults.py has the following

# ARCHIVE_TO_MBOX
#-1 - do not do any archiving
# 0 - do not archive to mbox, use builtin mailman html archiving only
# 1 - archive to mbox to use an external archiving mechanism only
# 2 - archive to both mbox and builtin mailman html archiving -
#     use this to make both external archiving mechanism work and
#     mailman's builtin html archiving.  the flat mail file can be
#     useful for searching, external archivers, etc.
ARCHIVE_TO_MBOX = 2

The references to external archiving assume that an external archiver
will use the .mbox file, but this isn't necessarily the case.

The default setting archives messages to both the .mbox and the
pipermail archive. The pipermail archive can be rebuilt from the
.mbox, but not vice versa


>I have other lists that have been archiving for years and have no mbox
>file. I guess I am a bit confused by the use of the mbox file for
>archives.


It seems that perhaps you have (had) set ARCHIVE_TO_MBOX to 0 in
mm_cfg.py.

If you don't have a .mbox file, it is possible to create one by
concatenating all the periodic .txt files, but there are problems with
this as email addresses may have been obscured and many of the
original message headers are missing.

In the absense of any .mbox file, the only way to fix the listinfo
links in the HTML archive is by editing the individual HTML files.

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