On Wed, 16 Jul 2003, Christian Dysthe wrote: > I use a program 'archivemail" to archive my mailboxes. However, the > program can not access /var/mail/user for archiving because of > permissions. What can I do to have this program get access to my spool? > My other mail is stored in /home/user/mail and is archived without > problems. > > I am running Mandrake 9.1, "default" IMAP and Squirrelmal.
>From a quick perusal of the manpage (looks nifty, BTW, thanks for turning me on to its existence), this is not strictly what it's for; it's designed to archive the stuff in /home/user/mail ... this leads to the question, "Why are you leaving some mails in your inbox (the spool) long enough to even /need/ archiving?" If what you're really looking for is a *backup* solution, I'd say that a cron job run as root to tar the spools up periodically (and then put the tarball somewhere safe) is a cleaner solution, and can be done in addition to this strategy for the handling of the personal mail folders. Bear in mind that archiving is one thing, backing up is another. Everyone has their own style of dealing with e-mail, of course, and the content and nature of their email flow will be unique as well, but FWIW, I've found that if I set up a few mail folders and a few filters that sort incoming mail into them intelligently, all I have left in my inbox once this procedure completes is the occasional mail that doesn't fit a filter, and a pile of Spam. I sort the former manually into one of a selection of "catch-all" folders (i.e., I have a "humor" one for the funny stuff that my friends will send me), and delete the rest of the inbox en masse. I've found that keeping a "clean" inbox has been an enormous help to me. SquirrelMail makes setting up folders and filtering quite easy; I use it myself here. It's an excellent package, IMHO. I use Pine as my primary mail client when I'm sitting here at the 'puter, and my SquirrelMail filters are set up to mimic my Pine filtering, so the right messages get put into the right folders no matter which way I access my mail. A more elegant solution would be to use procmail, and therefore not need the filtering function of either client app - with the added benefits of a single point of configuration, and the fact that the filtering would occur immediately upon initial delivery (rather than at some later point, when a mail client is run) - but I haven't gotten that ambitious just yet. ;) I love the fact that because SquirrelMail uses IMAP to give remote access to my stored mail folders, I can be visiting at an internet-connected friend's house, and a conversation like the following one can occur: ME: Did Tony send you that link to the Flash animation with the BSOD? THEM: Nope, haven't seen it. ME: Move over a second, then. You'll love it. <clickety-click, as I access SquirrelMail and my "humor" folder from his system (and by using only his browser), then click on the link in the mail message that I had saved into that folder when I first read it in Pine> ME: Check this out ... <moving aside> (Oh, the link? http://www.ubergeek.tv/whatswrong ... if you're easily offended by a bit of coarse language, best not to bother with it <g>). I know that this is more info than you asked for, but perhaps it will give an idea or two to those who haven't explored the possibilities of IMAP and SquirrelMail, or thought much about the many strategies that can be used to make handling of email more flexible, and better suited to one's needs. For a more specific solution, you may find that using a .procmailrc file to redirect all of your incoming mails to a folder like "/home/user/in", and then filtering further the contents of /that/ folder (rather than the inbox itself) in the same fashion you use now on the inbox, will give you what you want in the most effortless manner. As always, YMMV. :) HTH! -- Bill Mullen [EMAIL PROTECTED] MA, USA RLU #270075 MDK 8.1 & 9.0 "In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move." - Douglas Adams
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