Re: Importing/migrating Mailman mbox files into Google Groups?

[Cameron Simpson]

On 16Apr2015 08:32, Skip Montanaro <skip.mo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>Quite sometime ago (2011?), the classic-rendezvous mailing list, which had
>been hosted by a Mailman instance at bikelist.org, was reconstituted as a
>Google Group. Just a bunch of old bikies interested in vintage bikes. The
>original archives were never imported into the new group. (It might not
>have been possible at that time.) I suspect there might be a way to
>accomplish that today using some Google API like this:
>
>https://developers.google.com/admin-sdk/groups-migration/v1/reference/archive/insert
>
>Has anyone here attempted such a feat? I have no problem with the Python
>side of traversing the necessary mbox archive files, but have no experience
>with any of the Google APIs.
>
>Pointers appreciated...

Hmm, I have never used these.

However, before you get very excited see if people can get messages back out of
the archive. A major annoyance for me with GGroups versus mailman is that if I
join a group I cannot download the historical archive. (This is a standard step
for me when I join a mailing list. I hear mailman 3 might be tossing this
facility; I am unimpressed.)

Returning to the original question, it looks like the uppload format is pretty
simple. This page:

https://developers.google.com/admin-sdk/groups-migration/v1/guides/manage-email-migrations#group_migration_media_upload

which is linked to from your link seems to show an example.

Cheers,
Cameron Simpson <c...@zip.com.au>

Facts do not discourage the conspiracy-minded.
- Robert Crawford <raw...@iac.net>

[Skip Montanaro]

On Fri, Apr 17, 2015 at 7:33 PM, Cameron Simpson <c...@zip.com.au> wrote:
> However, before you get very excited see if people can get messages back out
> of the archive. A major annoyance for me with GGroups versus mailman is that
> if I join a group I cannot download the historical archive. (This is a
> standard step for me when I join a mailing list. I hear mailman 3 might be
> tossing this facility; I am unimpressed.)

I'll clarify briefly. The archives are from a now-defunct mailing list
which accumulated about 190k posts during its nearly ten-year life.
The only interface to the archives is a rather feeble search
interface. There is no way to just read through the archives in
chronological fashion. I know Google Groups isn't very popular here,
but trust me, it would provide a much better interface to these
archives than the current search interface. I will obviously verify
that the messages can be read through GG before dumping all of them
into this archive.

Skip

[Cameron Simpson]

I think I understood that there was an existing archive. My caveat was more
something to consider before choosing GGroups (too late, and in any case hardly
a deal breaker, especially since Google finally cleaned up a lot of their
HTML/text rendering issues).

Maybe I could suggest, in addition to uploading the archive as raw messages for
GGroups to present, uploading the archive as a compressed mbox file for members
to download if they wish a local archive copy.

Cheers,
Cameron Simpson <c...@zip.com.au>

Truly, the ultimate demonstration of the computer's utility is that it
continues to be indispensable in spite of those who run the things.
- Steve Glass, in e-mail

[Skip Montanaro]

On Sat, Apr 18, 2015 at 6:42 PM, Cameron Simpson <c...@zip.com.au> wrote:
> I think I understood that there was an existing archive. My caveat was more
> something to consider before choosing GGroups (too late, and in any case
> hardly a deal breaker, especially since Google finally cleaned up a lot of
> their HTML/text rendering issues).

One more point. The moderator of this defunct list moved the group
from its old place on bikelist.org to Google Groups. It's been there
already for several years. I would propose just stuffing the archives
into the new group except said moderator made the archives of the new
group open only to subscribers. Now that it's been running that way
for several years, it's a bit late to open things up.

> Maybe I could suggest, in addition to uploading the archive as raw messages
> for GGroups to present, uploading the archive as a compressed mbox file for
> members to download if they wish a local archive copy.

I think the existing archives are in MH format. Shouldn't be too
difficult to generate
the usual Mailman-style mbox-file-per-month or perhaps one per year.

Thx,

Skip