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Gory Details

This sections explain in detail how MHonArc functions. Knowing the material covered in this section may help you when trouble shooting.


OS Detection

MHonArc will automatically detect which operating system it is running under. If the following list of conditions are true, MHonArc assumes it is running under MS-DOS:

If any of the above conditions is false, MHonArc assumes it is running under Unix.

NOTE

The previous conditions are used since the conditions will exist if Perl has been installed on an MS-DOS machine. None of the above conditions exist when Perl is installed on a Unix system.


Processing Steps

This section describes the steps MHonArc performs when creating/editting an archive. Anytime messages are added or deleted or the index page layout is changed, MHonArc will perform the following steps.

Normally, knowing all the previous steps is unnecessary. However, it may be useful to be aware of them if unexpected behavior, or errors, occur.


Archive Integrity

MHonArc applies safeguards to try to insure that a mail archive does not get corrupted due to exceptional circumstances. MHonArc does the following to insure a mail archive does not get corrupted:


File Formats

Database File

The MHonArc database file is actual Perl code. MHonArc requires it like any other Perl library to load in the contents of the database.

CAUTION

You should never modify the database file by hand. Changing the file by hand could cause future incorrect/unpredictable behavior when processing the archive.

Index and Message Files

The indexes and message files are legal HTML documents. However, manual editting of the documents is discouraged. The documents contain special comment declarations. The comment declarations act as markers which allow MHonArc to correctly edit the documents when needed.

The comment declarations look like the following:

<!--X-Body-Begin-->
<!--X-User-Header-->
<!--X-User-Header-End-->
<!--X-TopPNI-->
...

Derived Files

Derived files are files that are generated by the MIME filters. These files are created when the data being processed in messages cannot be converted to HTML (eg. images, postscript, video, binaries). The format of these files depend on the content-type of the data.


Notes


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