On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 08:07:45AM -0500, Josh Smith wrote:
quoted text
> Dear Misc@,
> 
> I have a largeish ( around 10 gb) mail archive stored in a mbox file
> and it's starting to get a bit unwieldy to maintain, it's difficult to
> search through and etc. With that in mind I was wondering what others
> on the list might be doing to maintain their mail archives?
> 
> Would I be better off maintaining this in a maildir?  If so what are
> my options for conversion?
> 
> Weather or not I keep it in mbox format or convert it to something
> else - what sort of tools are out there to break it up into multiple
> archives by year or perhaps sender?

Maildir would help with access, at least. There are lots of options for
conversion, including your mail client (I *know* mutt can do this.)

Have you considered http://sup.rubyforge.org/? I've heard mixed things
about it (it's still in beta, and it does have bugs), but it's supposed
to handle large volumes of mail well.

Similarly, IMAP has a SEARCH extension. Most IMAP servers will keep
indices for you, but getting the mail client to issue the proper
commands (instead of searching locally) may take some doc-reading.

		Joachim

-- 
PotD: databases/p5-DBIx-DBSchema - database-independent schema objects
http://www.joachimschipper.nl/