Have you considered converting to something a bit more... um... dependable? like maildir? I know it would take a while to do the convert, but for an archive that big it might make things a bit easier. Jay On Thursday 26 July 2001 8:02 pm, you wrote: > Greetings! > > Mailing list dictator here <dramatic pause for effect>. > > The tclug archives (well all the mailing list archives on list server) have > grown large enough -and- the tclug list (and all other other lists) are > busy enough that it's becoming difficult to get a clean backup of the > archives. > > Technical sideline: Mailman is kind of dorky, it stores all the archives in > mbox format. Yes, 1 huge-ass file. So, I'm in the middle of backing up this > 1.0Gb (yes, that is the size of some of the archives) a new message comes > in and it gets append to the mbox file. Oops! BRU freaks on the check > because the file changed from the time it started to write the file to tape > until the time it finished writing the file to tape. > > So, I'm going to suspend processing mail message from 3am - 5am. The backup > kicks off at 3:02am and has been finishing around 4:45am. This should give > us a clean backup. > > Mailing list dictator signing off <dramatic pause> -- Jay Kline list at slushpupie.com http://www.slushpupie.com FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN: #2 Desserts: A woman will generally admire an ornate dessert for the artistic work it is, praising its creator and waiting a suitable interval before she reluctantly takes a small sliver off one edge. A man will start by grabbing the cherry in the center. Car repair: The average man thinks his Y chromosome contains complete repair manuals for every car made since World War II. He will work on a problem himself until it either goes away or turns into something that "can't be fixed without special tools". The average woman thinks "that funny thump-thump noise" is an accurate description of an automotive problem. She will, however, have the car serviced at the proper intervals and thereby incur fewer problems than the average man.