1ARCHIVEMAIL(1) ARCHIVEMAIL(1)
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6 archivemail - archive and compress your old email
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9 archivemail [ options ] MAILBOX ...
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13 archivemail is a tool written in python(1) for archiving and compress‐
14 ing old email in mailboxes.
15 By default it will read the mailbox MAILBOX, moving messages that are
17 older that the specified number of days (180 by default) to a mbox-for‐
18 mat mailbox in the same directory that is compressed with gzip(1).
19 archivemail supports reading IMAP, Maildir, MH and mbox-format mail‐
21 boxes, but it will always write archive files to mbox-format mailboxes
22 that are compressed with gzip(1).
23 archivemail has some support for being run as the root user on user
25 mailboxes. When running as root, it will seteuid(2) to the owner of the
26 mailbox it is reading, creating any archive files as that user.
27
29 -d NUM, --days=NUM
30 Archive messages older than NUM days. The default is 180. This
31 option is incompatible with the --date option below.
32 -D DATE, --date=DATE
34 Archive messages older than DATE. DATE can be a date string in
35 ISO format (eg '2002-04-23'), Internet format (eg '23 Apr 2002')
36 or Internet format with full month names (eg '23 April 2002').
37 Two-digit years are not supported. This option is incompatible
38 with the --days option above.
39 -o PATH, --output-dir=PATH
41 Use the directory name PATH to store the mailbox archives. The
42 default is the same directory as the mailbox to be read.
43 -P FILE, --pwfile=FILE
45 Read IMAP password from file FILE instead of from the command
46 line. Note that this will probably not work if you are archiv‐
47 ing folders from more than one IMAP account.
48 -F STRING, --filter-append=STRING
50 Append STRING to the IMAP filter string. For IMAP wizards.
51 -s NAME, --suffix=NAME
53 Use the suffix NAME to create the filename used for archives.
54 The default is _archive. For example, if you run archivemail on
55 a mailbox called exsouthrock, the archive will be created with
56 the filename exsouthrock_archive.gz.
57 NAME is run through the python(1) time.strftime() function,
59 which means that you can specify any of the following special
60 directives in NAME to make archives named after the archive cut-
61 off date:
62 · %a Locale's abbreviated weekday name.
64 · %A Locale's full weekday name.
66 · %b Locale's abbreviated month name.
68 · %B Locale's full month name.
70 · %c Locale's appropriate date and time representation.
72 · %d Day of the month as a decimal number [01,31].
74 · %H Hour (24-hour clock) as a decimal number [00,23].
76 · %I Hour (12-hour clock) as a decimal number [01,12].
78 · %j Day of the year as a decimal number [001,366].
80 · %m Month as a decimal number [01,12].
82 · %M Minute as a decimal number [00,59].
84 · %p Locale's equivalent of either AM or PM.
86 · %S Second as a decimal number [00,61]. (1)
88 · %U Week number of the year (Sunday as the first day of the
90 week) as a decimal number [00,53]. All days in a new year pre‐
91 ceding the first Sunday are considered to be in week 0.
92 · %w Weekday as a decimal number [0(Sunday),6].
94 · %W Week number of the year (Monday as the first day of the
96 week) as a decimal number [00,53]. All days in a new year pre‐
97 ceding the first Sunday are considered to be in week 0.
98 · %x Locale's appropriate date representation.
100 · %X Locale's appropriate time representation.
102 · %y Year without century as a decimal number [00,99].
104 · %Y Year with century as a decimal number.
106 · %Z Time zone name (or by no characters if no time zone
108 exists).
109 · %% A literal "%" character.
111 -S NUM, --size=NUM
113 Only archive messages that are NUM bytes or greater.
114 -n, --dry-run
116 Don't write to any files -- just show what would have been done.
117 This is useful for testing to see how many messages would have
118 been archived.
119 -u, --preserve-unread
121 Do not archive any messages that have not yet been read.
122 archivemail determines if a message in a mbox-format or MH-for‐
123 mat mailbox has been read by looking at the Status header (if it
124 exists). If the status header is equal to 'RO' or 'OR' then
125 archivemail assumes the message has been read. archivemail
126 determines if a maildir message has been read by looking at the
127 filename. If the filename contains an 'S' after :2, then it
128 assumes the message has been read.
129 --dont-mangle
131 Do not mangle lines in message bodies beginning with "From ".
132 When archiving a message from a mailbox not in mbox format, by
133 default archivemail mangles such lines by prepending a '>' to
134 them, since mail user agents might otherwise interpret these
135 lines as message separators. Messages from mbox folders are
136 never mangled. See mbox(5) for more information.
137 --delete
139 Delete rather than archive old mail. Use this option with cau‐
140 tion!
141 --include-flagged
143 Normally messages that are flagged important are not archived or
144 deleted. If you specify this option, these messages can be
145 archived or deleted just like any other message.
146 --no-compress
148 Do not compress any archives using gzip(1).
149 --warn-duplicate
151 Warn about duplicate Message-IDs that appear in the input mail‐
152 box.
153 -v, --verbose
155 Reports lots of extra debugging information about what is going
156 on.
157 -q, --quiet
159 Turns on quiet mode. Do not print any statistics about how many
160 messages were archived. This should be used if you are running
161 archivemail from cron.
162 -V, --version
164 Display the version of archivemail and exit.
165 -h, --help
167 Display brief summary information about how to run archivemail.
168
170 archivemail requires python(1) version 2.0 or later.
171 To archive an IMAP-format mailbox, use the format imap://username:pass‐
173 word@server/mailbox to specify the mailbox. You can omit the password
174 from the URL; use the --pwfile option to make archivemail read the
175 password from a file, or just enter it upon request. Substitute 'imap'
176 with 'imaps', and archivemail will establish a secure SSL connection.
177 When reading an mbox-format mailbox, archivemail will create a lockfile
179 with the extension .lock so that procmail will not deliver to the mail‐
180 box while it is being processed. It will also create an advisory lock
181 on the mailbox using flock(2). archivemail will also complain and
182 abort if a 3rd-party modifies the mailbox while it is being read.
183 archivemail will always attempt to preserve the mode, last-access and
185 last-modify times of the input mailbox. However, archive mailboxes are
186 always created with a mode of 0600.
187 If archivemail finds a pre-existing archive mailbox it will append
189 rather than overwrite that archive.
190 archivemail attempts to find the delivery date of a message by looking
192 for valid dates in the following headers, in order of precedence:
193 Delivery-date, Date and Resent-Date. If it cannot find any valid date
194 in these headers, it will use the last-modified file timestamp on MH
195 and Maildir format mailboxes, or the date on the From line on mbox-for‐
196 mat mailboxes.
197 archivemail will refuse to operate on mailboxes that are symbolic links
199 or create tempfiles or archives in world-writable directories.
200
202 To archive all messages in the mailbox debian-user that are older than
203 180 days to a compressed mailbox called debian-user_archive.gz in the
204 current directory:
205 bash$ archivemail debian-user
207 To archive all messages in the mailbox debian-user that are older than
209 180 days to a compressed mailbox called debian-user_October_2001.gz
210 (where the current month and year is April, 2002) in the current direc‐
211 tory:
212 bash$ archivemail --suffix '_%B_%Y' debian-user
214 To archive all messages in the mailbox cm-melb that are older than the
216 first of January 2002 to a compressed mailbox called cm-melb_archive.gz
217 in the current directory:
218 bash$ archivemail --date'1 Jan 2002' cm-melb
220 Exactly the same as the above example, using an ISO date format
222 instead:
223 bash$ archivemail --date=2002-01-01 cm-melb
225 To delete all messages in the mailbox spam that are older than 30 days:
227 bash$ archivemail --delete --days=30 spam
229 To archive all read messages in the mailbox incoming that are older
231 than 180 days to a compressed mailbox called incoming_archive.gz in the
232 current directory:
233 bash$ archivemail --preserve-unread incoming
235 To archive all messages in the mailbox received that are older than 180
237 days to an uncompressed mailbox called received_archive in the current
238 directory:
239 bash$ archivemail --no-compress received
241 To archive all mailboxes in the directory $HOME/Mail that are older
243 than 90 days to compressed mailboxes in the $HOME/Mail/Archive direc‐
244 tory:
245 bash$ archivemail -d90 -o $HOME/Mail/Archive $HOME/Mail/*
247
249 Probably the best way to run archivemail is from your crontab(5) file,
250 using the --quiet option.
251 Don't forget to try the --dry-run option for non-destructive testing.
253
255 Normally the exit status is 0. Nonzero indicates an unexpected error.
256
258 There is no support yet for reading MMDF or Babyl-format mailboxes. In
259 fact, archivemail will probably think it is reading an mbox-format
260 mailbox and cause all sorts of problems.
261 archivemail is still too slow, but if you are running from crontab(5)
263 you won't care. Archiving maildir-format mailboxes should be a lot
264 quicker than mbox-format mailboxes since it is less painful for the
265 original mailbox to be reconstructed after selective message removal.
266
268 python(1), gzip(1), mutt(1), procmail(1)
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271 The archivemail home page is currently hosted at sourceforge
272 <URL:http://archivemail.sourceforge.net>
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275 This manual page was written by Paul Rodger <paul at paulrodger dot
276 com>. Updated by Nikolaus Schulz <microschulz@web.de>
277SP 02 November 2006 ARCHIVEMAIL(1)