Libelle Mail Archive Manual

Setting up automatic archiving

The maloader.conf file controls MALoader and should have already been edited to define the runtime conditions for the mail archiving run.

Setting up Automatic archiving is done in two steps:

1. Define a cron job that runs MALoader in the Libelle Mail Archive user at the required frequency. Normally it is sufficient to run the loader overnight at a quiet time that doesn't clash with backups, etc. Take the following points into account when you create the cron job:
   • The job definition should be put in /etc/cron.d
   • Define MAILTO=root so that the run report will be mailed to root.
   • Specify that the job must be run under the Libelle Mail Archive user.
   • Make sure the command line contains the 2>&1 argument so that the run report will contain text written to both stdout and stderr.
   • Command line options should not be needed: the correct runtime parameters are all set in maloader.conf
2. Change your MTA configuration so that copies of all inbound and outbound messages are sent to the Libelle Mail Archive user. Postfix merely requires an always_bcc parameter to be added to master.cf. Other MTAs should provide an equivalent facility.

The loader is quite fast. Representative figures are given here. However, it can be slowed down by the DNS queries it uses to verify e-mail senders' addresses. If this is a problem, consider running a cacheing DNS server because this will reduce the network traffic generated by MALoader.