[Dovecot] Any suggestions for backing up an imap server and whould maildir or dbox be better than mbox?

[tomas at tuxteam.de]

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On Thu, Oct 02, 2008 at 08:52:13PM -0400, Eric T wrote:
> 
> >> BTW: Dose changing the mailbox format from mbox to Maildir or dbox dose 
> >> have any advantages?
> > 
> > I don't think it makes any difference in this case.
> > 
> 
> It would make a difference if you were to Rsync. Since Rsync is done on
> a file level; with mbox every new message means that the entire mbox
> file will need to be copied out.

Oh, no. Rsync is smarter than this. If you don't tell it _not_ to do it,
it will transfer chunks of files which have changed and modify the
target file in-place. How it does recognize what to do is actually worth
a read [1].

Note that this algorithm is ideal for files which are (mostly) appended
to, like mboxes or log files.

[1] <http://rsync.samba.org/tech_report/>

Regards
- -- tomás


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