From: Wietse Venema (wietseporcupine.org)
Date: Mon Feb 02 2004 - 07:23:36 CST

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Victor.Duchovnimorganstanley.com:
> On Sun, 1 Feb 2004, Wietse Venema wrote:
>
> > #DEFINE dont_remove
> > The dont_remove parameter is a debugging aid. When enabled, Postfix
> > does not delete queue files but rather saves them in the "saved"
> > mail queue.
> >
> > This feature can also be used to archive all mail. To recover
> > the envelope information and content, use the postcat(1) command.
> >
> > I added this feature to Postfix as a safety net before I started
> > using it myself after four months into the project. This feature
> > never was removed, and may actually be useful for some people.
> >
>
> One more observation, the "REMOVE" interface is also used by "cleanup"
> when deleting queue files for rejected messages and by "pickup" when
> deleting "maildrop" files. If the facility is to be used for archiving, it
> should only archive messages that entered the incoming queue.
>
> Otherwise one ends up archiving the incomplete queue files of messages
> rejected by header/body checks and double-archiving locally submitted
> mail. One can perhaps use mode bits and file ownership to distinguish most
> of the extra cases from "real" messages, but it is not clear that this is
> the desired semantics if "dont_remove" is to be interpreted as "don't
> remove delivered messages" as opposed to "never remove any queue files".

The code that implements "dont remove" is a good starting point.
It would take a new boolean parameter and a little extra queue manager.

Apart from those details, is this idea of parking old mail in an
"old mail" queue a practical option to archive mail, and what
support is missing? The whole idea is so similar to the "HOLD"
feature that both may benefit from any tooling developed for
inspection etc.

        Wietse

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