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.