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authorPaul Rodger <paul@paulrodger.com>2002-04-13 11:36:32 +0000
committerPaul Rodger <paul@paulrodger.com>2002-04-13 11:36:32 +0000
commitba5426db3f92f08c2b86564c076a9f99f86f4efd (patch)
tree25be77b876e57f73330a20dc1191cd40affa126d /README
parentd7bd2d407cd31e06f0b4e8b58b099e1f69e49ff0 (diff)
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Added a lot more documentation, fixed up usage messages and expanded a lot
on the man page.
Diffstat (limited to 'README')
-rw-r--r--README51
1 files changed, 10 insertions, 41 deletions
diff --git a/README b/README
index 644bd38..8506f62 100644
--- a/README
+++ b/README
@@ -11,10 +11,11 @@ To install archivemail, run:
USE:
-'archivemail' is a tool written in Python for organising and storing old
-email choking any of your mailboxes. It can move messages older than a
-certain number of days to a separate 'archive' mbox-format mailbox that
-is compressed with 'gzip'.
+archivemail is a tool written in python(1) for archiving and compressing old
+email in mailboxes.
+
+It can move messages older than the specified number of days to a separate
+'archive' mbox-format mailbox that is compressed with 'gzip'.
For example, have you been subscribing to the 'linux-kernel' mailing list
for the last 6 years and ended up with an 160-meg mailbox that 'mutt' is
@@ -24,8 +25,9 @@ just the most recent messages.
'archivemail' can save a lot of disk space and will significantly reduce
overhead on your mail reader. The number of days before mail is considered
-'old' is up to you, but the default is 180 days. To see the options
-archivemail supports, try running 'archivemail --help'.
+'old' is up to you, but the default is 180 days.
+
+For more detailed information, look at the archivemail man page.
'archivemail' currently works on mbox, maildir and MH format mailboxes
and requires python v2.0 or greater. It also supports deleting old mail
@@ -33,41 +35,8 @@ instead of archiving it with the '--delete' option.
The best way to run archivemail is from cron. Giving the '-q' option to
archivemail will make it quiet, only printing messages if something went
-wrong.
-
-Another good option to remember is the '--dry-run' or '-n' option, which will
-just show you how many messages it would have archived without actually
-writing to the disk.
-
-archivemail is not exactly blazingly quick at the moment, but if you run it
-from cron you won't mind. Archiving from maildir mailboxes instead of 'mbox'
-is a lot quicker too, since we don't have to do to as much effort to delete
-mail from the original mailbox.
-
-Here is an example script I use for running archivemail from cron:
-__________________________________________________________________________
-
-#!/bin/sh
-#set -x
-set -e
-ARCMAIL="archivemail --output-dir=$HOME/Mail/Archive/ "
-
-$ARCMAIL --days 30 --delete $HOME/Mail/duplicates
-$ARCMAIL --days 90 $HOME/Mail/bugtraq \
- $HOME/Mail/debian-devel \
- $HOME/Mail/debian-mentors \
- $HOME/Mail/debian-user \
- $HOME/Mail/jobs \
- $HOME/Mail/linux-kernel \
- $HOME/Mail/python-list \
- $HOME/Mail/spam \
- $HOME/Mail/spam-l \
-$ARCMAIL $HOME/Mail/cm-melb \
- $HOME/Mail/exsouthrock \
- $HOME/Mail/received \
- $HOME/Mail/sent \
- $HOME/Mail/vim
-__________________________________________________________________________
+wrong. Check out the 'examples' directory for an example shell script to
+be run from cron.
The archivemail website is at: http://archivemail.sourceforge.net/