[NTLUG:Discuss] / filling up...

[kbrannen@gte.net]

Wayne Dahl wrote:
> On Fri, 2003-04-25 at 20:27, Darin W. Smith wrote:

>>Yes.  They are just standard maildir-style files.  For example:
>>~/evolution/local/Inbox/mbox is the file containing your Inbox mail. 
>>All the mail just goes in that one ascii file, just like Netscape or
>>anything else.  Easy to import into any mail program.  Don't worry about
>>the other files...those are indices that Evolution uses to make loading
>>your inbox faster.  They will get generated when you import the
>>mailboxes in.
>>
>>I am developing the habit of dropping everything older than 2 months
>>into a series of "archive" mailboxes, then burning those to CD and
>>emptying them out from time to time (like every 6 months).  That really
>>helps keep the email from piling up.
> 
> 
> That's a great idea.  There are a LOT of emails I get from this list and
> especially from the Samba list (you wouldn't BELIEVE the volume of mail
> generated on that one!).  They're not all pertinent to any question I
> have at this time, but they may apply later, so saving them to CD is a
> great idea.  I have a CD-RW, but no blanks I can append a file
> to...they're just CD-W disks...once burned, you can't continue the file
> on them, if I understand the format correctly.

That would be "CD-R" disks, but I know what you mean. :-)  I solve the problem 
by making email folders by years, then at the end of the year, I gzip the file 
up and move it somewhere else (eventually to a CD).  If you need more 
granularity than that, you could do it by quarter, e.g. 2003q1, 2003q2, etc. 
Be sure your email program is not running when you do the folder/file work. 
:-)  Then if you need to go back thru the "saved" folders, you can always load 
them from CD (or whereever), move them into your email dir where all the other 
folders are saved, and start your email program again and it should see it. 
(Or if you don't gzip the file, you can just grep/vi/whatever the file on the 
CD to get the info you need off of it.)

Another advantage to the above is that you don't replace files on a CD, you 
merely add more files.  So when you burn your "archive" CDs, be sure you do 
NOT finalize the CD, just finalize the session; then you can add more sessions 
(with other files) later.

HTH,
Kevin