Grep comes from the Unix world. Its a program that can search
for patterns in files based upon a regular expression.
Ah, I remember now.
For typical mail message, headers are good percentage of the message
data, if not the majority. Received headers can add up if a message
is routed through several MTAs.
Yes, I guess it can add a few lines to small text messages, but from an
archive/audit point of view they are "important" lines.
For MHonArc to "preserve" all headers would require a change how
message page edits are done since the only fixed data is the converted
message header and message body. Currently, the headers shown in
the comment declarations are rewritten each time a page is edited.
OK.
A typical thing to do is move processed data into an "archive" location
so MHonArc only processes new data.
Yes, I can do that, but then it's yet more "archives of archives" and so
on.
It also seems you could do
some pre-processing to make things quicker. Why is -single used?
It's a long story why -single is used. Basically my mail server
(Mercury32) is incapable of creating continuous files with a message
separator that is "MHonArc friendly", and it also strips out headers if
you use the built in archiving tools, not just MTA headers but some
message headers too (like in-reply-to). This means you either end up
with continuous files with half the headers missing, or you have to
instead resort to using *.CNM files (which are individual messages
containing ALL information).
From an audit point of view, I have found it essential to have all
information about the messages to hand, and for this reason I use
-single. This means I have a backup of all e-mail that enters or leaves
the organization, and (thanks to MHonArc) I can search and browse it
very quickly from anywhere on the LAN or even over the internet.
It works really well as the archives double up as a help desk tool - if
anyone says "I sent you an e-mail on the 5th - blah blah blah", anyone
in the company can pull it up on-screen within seconds. The only
problems are:
1. I can't get the Mercury team to agree to improve the archiving tools.
2. I loose headers at the MHonArc stage.
If there's a legal dispute or a virus or spam it makes it impossible to
trace without the MTA headers.
--
Gerry Hickman (London UK)
