[CLUE-Tech] Email archiving

[Chris Ernst]

On Mon, 19 Jul 2004 10:28:49 -0600
Mike Staver <staver at fimble.com> wrote:

> I saw an article today:
> 
> http://channels.netscape.com/ns/careers/package.jsp?name=fte/firedfromemail/firedfromemail
> 
> It has nothing to do with linux - but it made me think for a minute. 
> I read the part about email being subpoenaed, and then I asked myself
> what I would do if this happened at my company since I'm in charge of
> our mail here.  It got me wondering what everybody else does if they
> are in charge of their company's email system using linux.  With
> Exchange on Windows, I know that most companies just back up the
> information store nightly, or individual mail boxes using something
> like Veritas.  I then realized that if a company has a linux mail
> server and wants a free alternative, I was unsure as to what they
> would do in this situation with first backing up the mail, and second
> making sure they keep an archive of it for a certain period of time. 
> Is there anybody out there who has to deal with this?


I use exim with a simple rule in the global system filter.  The first
rule is:

# Save all e-mail to the archive
if first_delivery then
   # Save a copy of all messages
   unseen save /var/mail/archive/${substr_0_10:$tod_log} 660
endif

which saves a copy of all incoming and outgoing mail to a file named for
the date.  Each night, a cron job compresses it (bzip2) and copies it to
the backup server where it will eventually be archived on a dvd. 
Another cron job removes archives older than 30 days from the mail server.

	- Chris