Re: [tlug] Email Storage

[Simon Cozens <simon@example.com>]

Jason Hall wrote:
> What do people here use for long term personal email storage/archiving?

I spent several years trying to find a good answer to this question. :)

Currently, I use gmail for backup and searching, (by rights I should be
using Buscador and Email::Store, but, well, I don't...) and a rather
clever exim filter:

--------SNIP-------
# Exim filter
logfile /home/simon/.audit_log

# Catch mailing list mail and file by date
# Put all mails from, e.g., tlug in tlug-yyyymm
if  not delivered
and (   $h_List-Id: matches "<([^\.]+).*>"
    or  $sender_address: matches "owner-([^@example.com)[@example.com"
    or  $sender_address: matches "(.*)-request@"
    )
then
    if  "$1:$tod_log" matches "([^:]+):(....-..)"
    then    save Maildir/.$1-$2/
        logwrite  "$header_from::$header_subject::List $1"
    endif
endif

# Put all mails not apparently to me (circulars, etc.) into
# questionable-yyyymm
if not delivered and $header_to: does not contain $local_part then
    if  "$tod_log" matches "(.......)" then save Maildir/.questionable-$1/
        logwrite  "$header_from::$header_subject::Questionable"
    endif
endif

# Put everything else in the inbox
if not delivered then
    save Maildir/
        logwrite  "$header_from::$header_subject::Accepting"
endif
--------SNIP-------

I then move things to read-mail-yyyymm also have a rather clever
Thunderbird extension which automatically sets the outbox to outbox-yyyymm.

Either I know what month things happened in, in which case scanning a
limited number of mails is easy, or I don't, in which case I use gmail's
search.

-- 
Jenkinson's Law:
	It won't work.