... ...
Am wondering what the TL;DR of all this is, i.e., the summarized outcome and current status of all Michael P's efforts here? -A
aaronco36@sdf.org SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.org
Aaron, I seem to no longer have Michael's upthread posting around, so I'm keying off your post to respond to him.
Michael Paoli wrote:
Fix that using /var/lib/mailman/bin/arch to re-gen the archive, like:
$ su - # su - list $ cd /var/lib/mailman $ bin/arch -q --wipe balug-test archives/private/balug-test.mbox/balug-test.mbox $ exit # exit $
You don't want to be the root user, or you'll end up having to later retroactively chown to list:list the generated archves. (I've made that mistake a time or three. Maybe you just figured that out. ;-> )
/var/lib/mailman/bin/arch will set permissions right. Just don't run it as the wrong user.
(The 'arch' in $PATH is of course something else entirely.)
Been there, done that. ;-) Though the bit about it being applied (done) to the other lists was rather left as implied by that posting, but yes, also done.
references/excerpts:
https://temp.balug.org/pipermail/balug-test/2017/000014.html
Quoting aaronco36 (aaronco36@SDF.ORG):
Am wondering what the TL;DR of all this is, i.e., the summarized outcome and current status of all Michael P's efforts here?
I think he means he successfully used balug-test as a test case (pun semi-intended) for import of mail to the mailing list's mbox and generation of the archive. This was to gain confidence that doing likewise to the main mailing lists has a good plan.
For balug-talk in particular (maybe some others), Michael has in mind to attempt to assemble a more-complete history, adding posting salvaged from other sources such as subscribers' saved mail, and merging that into the mailing list's mbox as a basis for running $MAILMAN_HOME/bin/arch to make a new pipermail archive. Seems worthwhile, but doubtless it'll take some time, and he might have to bodge headers on some of the saved mail to make it work. (You ask subscribers whether they have old postings in mbox format, and in my experience they send you the damnedest random formats, disregarding the qualifier about 'mbox' because they didn't understand it and weren't smart enough to ask. I experienced this when sf-lug mailing list subscribers supplied backfill material for that archive. A lot of what I got was not at all what I asked.)
Sufficent scripting-fu can, in my experience, reassemble an mbox that $MAILMAN_HOME/bin/arch will parse correctly. Just make sure that you keep a safety copy of the most recent mbox _verified_ to parse right, so you don't burn your bridges, only your spare time.
I believe backfilling the archives is the only task remaining. (Dreamhost "oops"-discarded quite a lot, over the years.)
I suppose it depends what one means by "all this" and "outcome" Let's see, in the beginning(?), there was the Big Bang, ... and eventually we have the heat death of the universe.
In the meantime, among other things,
Once upon a time, all of BALUG.org stuff was hosted on DreamHost.com hosting.
In more recent years, fair bit of BALUG.org stuff has been hosted elsewhere, however everything for (among others) the domains themselves of balug.org, www.balug.org, and lists.balug.org, notably including the primary and most of the production BALUG web pages, and BALUG's lists, remained hosted on DreamHost.com hosting.
Anyway, that's no longer the case. Absolutely nothing of BALUG.org is hosted on DreamHost.com hosting any more. DreamHost.com freedom (from) day arrived to BALUG.org early this past Monday. Since then we are - and shall remain, 100% free of DreamHost. Yippie! ... (and *finally*).
Oh, and yes, this was all accomplished with relatively minimal pain/annoyance to the well over 800 list subscribers BALUG has. Except for passwords, all user settings/preferences were preserved and moved over, and there's use of transitional domain temp.balug.org, which will again settle to lists.balug.org ... but not (fully) there quite yet.
And yes, we have our archives ... at least what was on DreamHost.com that they'd not irretrievably lost earlier ... plus of course the newer postings.
But .. this doesn't seem all that much like a test post? ;-)