Using Unix as a mail archive

[Peter Steele]

We are using two Unix machines and two PC networks, all tied together
over ethernet. We use elm on the Unix machines and Pegasus mail on
the PCs. We have mailing groups set up for different interests and
we want to archive all messages sent to those groups. For example,
we might have a mailing group called network-tr for "Network Trouble
Report" with members tom at thor, fred at loki, joe at zeus, and last but not
least network-tr at archive-host (where archive-host is one of our Unix
machines). What I did was set up an alias on archive-host that looks
like 

    network-tr: "| cat >> /u/archive/network-tr"

which simply appends any messages send to network-tr at archive-host to
the file "network-tr" on account "archive". People log into account
archive and browse the archives using elm. However, the only way I can
seem to get this to work is to make the account and file world writeable,
which is not acceptable. I've played around with group protection but
can't seem to get something that works. When an alias like this is
executed, what daemon is doing it? I would think I could then make the
archive files to be owned by that entity so that it can append to the
archive files and give the archive account group read/only access so
that people can log into archive and read the archives with elm. Does
this sound reasonable or should I take another approach?

-- 
Peter Steele, Systems Software Analyst
Acadia University, Wolfville, NS, Canada B0P1X0 (902)542-2201x121
UUCP: {uunet|watmath|utai|garfield}!cs.dal.ca!aucs!Peter
BITNET: Peter at Acadia  Internet: Peter at aucs.AcadiaU.CA