Getting Your Email out of the Barracuda Message Archiver

We run a Barracuda Message Archiver 450. I really like the device, but we were looking at alternatives, and I needed a way to test possible solutions with real mail. The question that came to pass was, "How do we get our email out of the Barracuda?"

Basically, there is no out-of-the-box solution to this; Barracuda does not have a tool.

So, I wrote my own using Powershell. :)

I have to say that this code could stand to be cleaned up. I had to use some pretty circuitous methods to get it to work correctly.

Prior to running this:
1. You need to copy all of the files from the SMB share on the Barracuda Message Archiver somewhere else. I mapped this as U drive.
2. You need a working folder with gobs of space. I mapped this as my V drive.
3. Install 7zip

Basically, you have a bunch of .zip files. You extract everything out of these. The extracted files will have no extensions. What I got from support was that these files are either emails themselves, or are gzipped archives. I would use 7zip to try to decompress these files, and if the process returned an exit code of 2, I knew it wasn't a valid archive and would then append the .eml extension. If the file was a zip archive, the files unzipped would have the eml extension tacked onto the end.

I use a random number to create output folders to hold all of the many eml files. Some zips had upwards of 35,000 emails in them.

I KNOW I could have done a better job commenting this code. I'm almost embarassed to put it out here, but I really wished someone had given me some direction, so here it is. If you have the need for this script, you can create a copy of your archives and work through the code a chunk at a time to see what's going on, so that you don't put your production archives at risk. Remember that you can open .eml files with notepad. :)

I will use commented lines within the script for the remainder of this article.
The Script:

#Specify source and working folders, as well as report file variables
$Source = "U:\1"
$WorkingFolder = "V:\Extract"
$ReportFile = "C:\temp\MailArchReport.txt"
$ReportFileSpacer = "`r`n`r`n===========================================================================`r`n`r`n"

#Ask for starting file number and ending file number
[int]$StartingZip = Read-Host "Enter Number of First Zip File to Process"
[int]$EndingZip = Read-Host "Enter Number of Last Zip File to Process"

#Last chance to get out
$LastChanceAnswer = Read-Host "Are you sure you want to continue processing all files between $StartingZip.zip and $EndingZip.zip? (y or n)"
If ($LastChanceAnswer -ne "y"){
Break
} #End If

#Initialize the array to hold all expected zip file names
$ZipFileSet = @()

#Initialize Report File with the starting date and time
Get-Date | Add-Content $ReportFile

#Counter to populate the zip file names array
For ($i = $StartingZip; $i -le $EndingZip; $i++){
$StartipZipStr = "$i.zip"
$ZipFileSet = $ZipFileSet + $StartipZipStr
} #End For

#Add record for zip files processed to the report file
$ReportFileSpacer | Add-Content $ReportFile
"Files Processed:" | Add-Content $ReportFile
$ZipFileSet | %{Add-Content $ReportFile -Value $_}

#Go through the zip file names array and copy the files from the source to the working folder
Foreach ($file in $ZipFileSet){
copy-item "$Source\$file" -destination "$WorkingFolder"
} #End Foreach

#Create the first working folder
$WorkingFolderOneName = "$WorkingFolder\WorkingFolder1"
mkdir $WorkingFolderOneName | out-null

#Unzip all of the zip files in the array
Foreach ($file in $ZipFileSet){
$sourcefile = "$WorkingFolder\$file"
$targetfolder = "$WorkingFolderOneName"
$ZipCommandStringPartOne = 'C:\"Program Files"\7-zip\7z.exe'
$ZipCommandStringPartTwo = "x $sourcefile -o$targetfolder -r"
cmd.exe /C "$ZipCommandStringPartOne $ZipCommandStringPartTwo" | out-null
} #End Foreach

#Get a list of all files
$WeirdZipFiles = Get-ChildItem $TargetFolder -recurse | where {! $_.psiscontainer -and $_.fullname -notlike "*.???"} | select fullname, name, directory

#Add record for number of files
$ReportFileSpacer | Add-Content $ReportFile
"New zip files that don't have a zip extension:" | Add-Content $ReportFile
$WeirdZipFiles | measure-object | select count | %{$_.count | out-string} | Add-Content $ReportFile

#Initialize counters
$MovedCount = 0
$MovedRenamedCount = 0

#Create the folder for the emails
$RandomSeedForEMLFolder = Get-Random
$WorkingFolderTwoName = "$WorkingFolder\Emails_$RandomSeedForEMLFolder"
mkdir $WorkingFolderTwoName | out-null

#Each of those need to be unzipped.
Foreach ($file in $WeirdZipFiles){
$sourcefile = $File.Fullname
$targetfolder = $File.Directory.Fullname
$ZipCommandStringPartOne = 'C:\"Program Files"\7-zip\7z.exe'
$ZipCommandStringPartTwo = "x $sourcefile -o$targetfolder -r"
cmd.exe /C "$ZipCommandStringPartOne $ZipCommandStringPartTwo" | out-null
If ($LastExitCode -eq 2){ #If the file wasn't an archive, output the name.
$RandomSeed = Get-Random
$FileName = $File.Name
$FilePath = $File.directory.fullname
$OldFileFullname = ($FilePath + "\" + $FileName)
$FileNameAddition = "$RandomSeed.eml"
$NewFileName = ($FileName + $FileNameAddition)
$NewFileFullname = ($FilePath + "\" + $NewFileName)
Rename-Item $OldFileFullname -NewName $NewFileName
Move-Item $NewFileFullname $WorkingFolderTwoName
$MovedRenamedCount++
} #End If
If ($LastExitCode -eq 0){ #Otherwise, Rename, then move the raw eml file to working folder two
$FileNameSplit = $File.Name.split(".")
$ResultFileName = $FileNameSplit[0]
$FilePath = $File.directory.fullname
$OldFileFullname = ($FilePath + "\" + $ResultFileName)
$RandomSeed = Get-Random
$FileNameAddition = "$RandomSeed.eml"
$NewFileName = ($ResultFileName + $FileNameAddition)
$FilePath = $file.directory.fullname
$NewFileFullname = ($FilePath + "\" + $NewFileName)
Rename-Item $OldFileFullname -NewName $NewFileName
Move-Item $NewFileFullname $WorkingFolderTwoName
Remove-Item $SourceFile
$MovedCount++
} #End If
} #End Foreach

#Report Stuff
"`r`n Files that were renamed, then moved (.eml files): $MovedCount" | Add-Content $ReportFile
"`r`n Files that were extracted, then moved. $MovedCount" | Add-Content $ReportFile

#Remove working folder one
Remove-Item $WorkingFolderOneName -recurse -force

#Remove the zip files that were processed
Foreach ($file in $ZipFileSet){
$ZipFileSetPath = ($WorkingFolder + "\" + $file)
Remove-Item $ZipFileSetPath -recurse -force
} #End Foreach

#Add an ending timestamp to the report file
Get-Date | Add-Content $ReportFile

#Email the report file
Send-MailMessage `
-To me@contoso.com `
-From administrator@contoso.com `
-SMTPServer mail.contoso.com `
-Subject "Barracuda Zips Processed" `
-Body "See Attached Report" `
-Attachments $ReportFile

Remove-Item $ReportFile -force