The sys admin's daily grind: Archivemail

BOX OF LEGENDS

Author(s):

Charly loves to be organized, but he also likes to have access to mail that reached him when the dinosaurs were still roaming the earth.

Occasionally I need to delve into my mailboxes for an antique message, just to prod my memory. Because my mail client has a full text index of the inbox, I usually find the information I’m looking for within a couple of seconds. Unfortunately, this flush of success is often a delicate thing: With 300 messages flooding in every day, not counting mailing lists, the indexer often gives up the fight. And because many messages have bulky attachments, I genuinely need to clean out my modern day equivalent of the Augean stables.