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Re: Backup in mbox format?

2000-01-17 02:55:01
Greg Matheson <lang(_at_)ms(_dot_)chinmin(_dot_)edu(_dot_)tw> writes:
...
             :0 c
             backup/.

             :0 ic
             | cd backup && rm -f dummy `ls -t * | sed -e 1,32d`

There would be problems if you started deleting these mails from
within mutt, wouldn't there? And the problem with these backups
on a regular basis is it leaves 2 extra entries in .procmail/log
for each email received. 

The extra log entries are solved by moving your assignment of
LOGABSTRACT=all to after the above recipes.

As for concurent access causing problems, as long as you don't 'pack'
the mailbox (renumber the messages starting at 1 again), removing N
messages from inside mutt will leave you with at least 32-N messages.

Depending on the perversity of your system's implmentation of readdir(),
I think that packing a mailbox could result in *all* of the messages
being removed, but that would probably require this to be on a NFS
mounted filesystem with a seriously brain damaged file attribute cache
and many procmail processes trying to deliver to the backup folder while
the pack was taking place.  As a practical matter, I would guess that
you're more likely to be struck by lightening than to lose more than a
single message to this.  (May I recommend the mylar bodysuit with 2m of
copper grounding chain?)


Philip Guenther

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