[Mailman-Users] Using prune_arch on mailman v. 2.1.26

[Andy Cravens]

Using mailman 2.1.26.  I have one particular list that has a 3G mbox file and 
an 8G private archive directory.  I was going to use prune_arch to remove any 
archives over a year old.  I think the archives go back over ten years.  This 
particular list server has two cpus (@2.5GHz) but not sure how fast the disk 
is.  This server is typically more than 90% idle at any time.  Maybe a few 
bursts of activity on large lists every now and then.

I have three questions: 

First, If I run the prune_arch command to remove archives older than a year, is 
this going to take minutes, hours or days to complete?  In one post Mark Sapiro 
states that prune_arch locks the list while updating the LISTNAME.mbox so other 
processes won’t be updating concurrently.  Then the list is again locked by the 
bin/arch process while the HTML archive is being regenerated.   If this list is 
used on an hourly basis and the list is “locked” this could be problematic for 
us.

Second, Our disk space is getting low and that is why we are cleaning up the 
archives.  Is the prune_arch command going to be temporarily generating more 
files and taking up more space in order to process the list archives?  If so 
I’ll have to make sure we have enough disk space to run prune_arch.

I would like to schedule the prune_arch command as a cron job to run against 
several lists.  I have looked at prune_arch before and I found some earlier 
posts that detailed how to prune the archives and there were more instructions 
that just running the prune_arch command.  I cannot locate those old posts now. 
 I should have bookmarked them.  Is this all I need to do, just run prune_arch 
against the list and slap it in cron?

Thank you for any info you can provide.

—
Andy
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[Mailman-Users] Re: Using prune_arch on mailman v. 2.1.26

[Mark Sapiro]

On 8/11/20 1:21 PM, Andy Cravens wrote:
> 
> I have three questions: 
> 
> First, If I run the prune_arch command to remove archives older than a year, 
> is this going to take minutes, hours or days to complete?

minutes.


> In one post Mark Sapiro states that prune_arch locks the list while updating 
> the LISTNAME.mbox so other processes won’t be updating concurrently.  Then 
> the list is again locked by the bin/arch process while the HTML archive is 
> being regenerated.   If this list is used on an hourly basis and the list is 
> “locked” this could be problematic for us.


It shouldn't be locked for long. The prune_arch pruning process doesn't
run for long and then relinquishes the lock so other process waiting on
will acquire it before bin/arch gets it, and bin/arch shouldn't take
very long either.


> Second, Our disk space is getting low and that is why we are cleaning up the 
> archives.  Is the prune_arch command going to be temporarily generating more 
> files and taking up more space in order to process the list archives?  If so 
> I’ll have to make sure we have enough disk space to run prune_arch.


Assuming you don't specify -p/--preserve, there will temporarily be the
old .mbox and the new pruned .mbox simultaneously. That will be the
maximum increase. From there, disk utilization goes down.


> I would like to schedule the prune_arch command as a cron job to run against 
> several lists.  I have looked at prune_arch before and I found some earlier 
> posts that detailed how to prune the archives and there were more 
> instructions that just running the prune_arch command.  I cannot locate those 
> old posts now.  I should have bookmarked them.  Is this all I need to do, 
> just run prune_arch against the list and slap it in cron?


Going to

returns only 20 hits not including this thread. You should be able to
find what you're looking for.

I think just running prune_arch via cron will be enough for what you want.

-- 
Mark Sapiro The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, Californiabetter use your sense - B. Dylan
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