The ezmlm software that underlies the Kavi® Mailing List Manager has the ability to process email messages posted to a mailing list into a set of raw mail archives. This feature is enabled for all Kavi default list types. Without the ezmlm archives, there would be no centralized, persistent record of messages sent to the mail list. Only if archives exist can subscribers retrieve messages not stored on their own MUA, such as messages that may have been posted before they subscribed, messages they may have deleted from their mailbox or missed due to email bounces or any other reason. Lists that accept email commands will retrieve messages from these raw archives on command and resend the requested mail messages to the user who submitted the request, assuming the user is authorized.

The Kavi Mailing List Manager also uses ezmlm-idx, the ezmlm archive indexing tool, which maintains a message subject and author index for the raw archives.

Web-viewable archives are created by MHonArc, which uses the raw archives created by ezmlm-idx and reformats them for presentation on the web. MHonArc HTML archives are accessible through Kavi Mailing List Manager tools, can be formatted to match the look and feel of the rest of your site, are searchable and offer several types of indexes, including subject, author, date and thread.

In order for a mailing list to have any archives at all, ezmlm-idx archiving must be enabled (i.e., the -a switch must be set in the ezmlm-make string) of the underlying list type template. As long as archiving is enabled at the list type level, raw archives will exist, even if they are not visible to anyone except administrators and moderators.

The availability of web-visible, MHonArc archives is configured at the list level. If web-visible archiving is turned off at the list level, MHonArc archives will not be created for the list. If the feature was enabled and then turned off, any existing MHonArc archives will be deleted, but as long as raw archives exist, these can always be recreated.

Since archiving does consume some system overhead, it should be turned off for lists where archives are unnecessary.

For more information on the interaction between list type and list configuration settings, see Changing List Type Options.

Access permissions for the raw archives are set in the ezmlm-make string at the list type level, whereas permissions for the web-viewable archives are set at the list level. This means that raw archives may be available to a different set of users than the formatted archives. Generally, access to raw archives is more restricted than access to web-viewable archives.

Raw archives are retrieved through ezmlm email commands rather than Kavi Mailing List Manager tools, although the list may be configured to reject commands or only accept them from certain levels of subscribers. Admins and other authorized users may access the raw archives by URL path. If web-visible archives exist, they will be accessible through Public, Member or Admin pages, depending on access control settings. For more information, see Access Control.

The archive messages for each list are compartmentalized into monthly buckets. This enhances performance of the archiver and presents the messages in user-friendly, month-size chunks.

The indexes are largely self-describing, though it's probably a good idea to mention here that the "Messages by Thread" index only lists those threads containing more than one message. That is, for the purpose of the archive index, a message without any replies or followups is a single message, not a thread.

Lists can be configured to restrict access to both the web and raw archives. Access to a lists raw archives is configured in the underlying list type, and access to the web archives is configured at the list level when the list is added. Web archives can be hidden temporarily by editing the list when desired.

Even with controlled access measures available, the Kavi Mailing List Manager software offers administrators the option of obscuring subscriber email addresses in the archives to protect subscribers from potential address harvesters used by spammers. This is a little inconvenient when list users want to respond to another list user privately and can't get the other's address from the Web archives. On the other hand, address harvesters are relentless in their attempts to crack or bypass system security, and their address lists may be sold to spammers and others around the world, including unethical people running phishing schemes and other kinds of scams.