-----------------------------------------------------------
archivemail - archive and compress old mail in your mailbox
-----------------------------------------------------------

OVERVIEW:

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
taking a long time to load?  'archivemail' can move all messages that are
older than 6 months to a separate compressed mailbox, and leave you with
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. You can also archive messages
by an absolute date or only archive unread messages.


REQUIREMENTS:

archivemail requires python version 2.0 or later, with the optional 'zlib'
module, although the zlib module comes with most python installations.  If you
are compiling your own version of python < version 2.2, make sure you
uncomment the 'zlib' moduile in Modules/Setup in the python source directory.

You can check to see if your version of python has the 'zlib' module by 
trying this:

    flare:~$ python
    Python 2.1 (#1, Apr 26 2002, 11:22:45)
    [GCC 2.95.2 20000220 (Debian GNU/Linux)] on linux2
    Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
    >>> import zlib
    >>>

If you get an ImportError, then the zlib python module has not been installed.
Try upgrading your python distribution.

Python is available from http://www.python.org/

If you want to run the bundled test script, you will need python version 2.1
or later, because we use the PyUnit 'unittest' module. Sorry.


INSTALLATION:

If you want to test archivemail:
    cp archivemail archivemail.py
    python test_archivemail.py
    (NOTE: This could take over 90 seconds on slower systems)

To install archivemail, run:
    python setup.py install


USE:

For more detailed information and examples, look at the archivemail man page.

The best way to run archivemail is from cron, giving the '-q' option to
archivemail to make it quiet, only printing messages if something went 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/

If you have any feedback or bug reports about archivemail, you are very
welcome to email me.


-- Paul Rodger <paul@paulrodger.com>