# FreeBSD-compatible email archiving software



## herrbischoff (May 5, 2019)

In the past I had successfully used Mailpiler with some patches, unfortunately the developer has decided to focus exclusively on Linux and introduce explicitly BSD-incompatible changes. Also, no support is given should you somehow make it work.

Therefore, I'd like to ask around if someone has experience with reliable email archiving solutions for business usage. Is there even such a thing or would I need to have to bite the bullet and either use Linux for this or recommend buying a completely separate commercial solution?

Thanks for pointers and short input regarding experience with any recommended solution.


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## hotaronohanako (May 5, 2019)

you really know what to do ..


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## obsigna (May 5, 2019)

I quickly looked through the list of features of Mailpiler and most tasks could be done with a decent IMAP client & server (why not Tunderbird (client) + Dovecot (server). I would create a special archive IMAP user, whose home directory is a clone of the whole mail store on the server. Then depending on the needs, either any new incoming/outgoing mail could be duplicated to the archive store or tools like rsync(1) or clone(1) could be launched frequently by a cron job for keeping the archive synchronised. In the IMAP client, the archive user would have full access to all e-mails and decent clients allow for all kinds of tasks like searching/organizing/filtering/scripting etc. The clone store could even be on a separate machine.

Am I missing something?


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## herrbischoff (May 6, 2019)

obsigna said:


> Am I missing something?



Yes, several major points unfortunately: reasonably tamper-proof storage, users need to self-service and must only ever see their own email, creation of some kind of audit trail. IMAP is inherently read/write and that alone would create problems. You cannot trust a user not to sabotage himself, not even yourself. Also, it must be traceable what actions were performed on the archive. Mailpiler does all this.

I'm curious if there is something like a business-level email archiving solution or if this is exclusively the domain of commercial vendors. Which is entirely possible due to various legal regulations many free and open source projects would not even start to attempt to comply with.

The more I research this, the more it appears to be an area that's firmly in the hands of commercial Linux-based solutions and appliances.


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## obsigna (May 6, 2019)

You missed the point of the tamper proof cloned mail store to which only the archive (super) user would have access.


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## herrbischoff (May 6, 2019)

obsigna said:


> You missed the point of the tamper proof cloned mail store to which only the archive (super) user would have access.



And you appear to have missed the requirement of



herrbischoff said:


> users need to self-service and must only ever see their own email



which is crucial. It's perfectly fine if there is no solution apart from a commercial one available, I just thought I'd ask. Maybe someone else has ideas regarding how they archive email for their organization.


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