[Dovecot] Backup Maildir

[Philip Hallstrom]

>>> How do you backup e-mails for users when during the backup, they are
>>> deleting the e-mails from the Maildir (POPping) and at the same, and
>>> the SMTP server is also writing to it. 
>
> We're running Solaris on both the Dovecot and backup server. As backup 
> software, we're using Veritas Netbackup. At this time, we just backup the 
> Maildir data. I think the change that an open file is being backupped is very 
> small, but besides that, our users mostly want to restore mail from a few 
> days earlier.
>
> On Solaris there is the 'fssnap' tool to make a snapshot of the filesystem. I 
> could create a snapshot when the backup starts and delete it afterwards. An 
> other solution could be mirroring the filesystem with Solaris Volume Manager. 
> When the backup starts, break the mirror and restore it afterwards.

FreeBSD 5 also has a snapshot option for filesystems.  'dump' even has an 
option to create a snapshot just before it dumps that file system so you 
don't have to worry about changing files during the backup...

-philip