On 04/09/2010 3:21 PM, William "Chops" Westfield wrote:
> On Sep 4, 2010, at 6:18 AM, Rolf wrote:
>
>>> I had a look around to see what I should use to accomplish it, and I
>>> decided on 'lurker'. I downloaded, built, and installed it, did a
>>> little
>>> configuration, and the imported the past 5 years of PICList mails
>>> in to it.
> I was a little annoyed that I couldn't find any documentation for
> lurker.  Most soucreforge projects have a wiki or something.  "imports
> existing archives"; swell, but in what formats and etc?  Is it
> strictly a web-based GUI?  Grr...
>
> It does claim to run under windows as well...
>
> BillW
>

Yeah, the web-docs for it are weak. On the flip side, the tar.gz=20
contains INSTALL, and FAQ, which between them were enough to get going.
For the record, it supports both mbox and maildir formats (although, for=20
maildir it looks in the Maildir/new folder for mails, which is not that=20
smart, really...). I use Maildir myself, and I had to clone my maildir=20
folders, then rename the cur to new, for it to import. I only discovered=20
this 'fix' by actually reading the source code... but, that's why we=20
have the code, right. As for the loading of mails as they arrive it=20
takes them in on StdIn... which makes sense, and makes it really easy to=20
install in a .procmailrc or other delivery agent.

When it imports the mails it internally appends them to a compressed=20
mbox form of folder, so it keeps it's own copy. It then indexes the=20
mails through various 'dimensions' including subject, author, body, etc.

I installed the entire 'lurker' system in to it's own folder (web=20
frontend, databases, management programs, documentation (man pages),=20
etc, and that entire folder, with 6 years of piclist messages (and the=20
cached pages of what people have so far viewed), is 763MB.

Relatively neat, considering the actual mail on disk in my Maildir=20
folders is 1.3GB.

Oh, and there have been 26 unique IP's to access the archive on my=20
machine (excluding google and myself).

Then again, perhaps I should revise that down to 25, because Olin's=20
'visit' does not count, he did not actually *do* anything, did not even=20
click a link.

Rolf
--=20
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist
.