[Dovecot] Backing Up

[Sotiris Tsimbonis]

Scott Silva wrote, On 10/30/2008 12:34 AM:
> on 10-29-2008 3:18 PM Dave McGuire spake the following:
>> On Oct 29, 2008, at 5:32 PM, Arkadiusz Miskiewicz wrote:
>>>>>> What is the best way to do a (server-side) backup of all mail in a
>>>>>> user's mail?
>>>>> I usually just rsync the /home directories to another server. The
>>>>> inital sync
>>>>> can take a while, but it gets faster after there is a base to work
>>>>> from.
>>>>    ...and it's much less painful if you're using maildir instead of
>>>> mbox!
>>> Not for rsyncing. Tons of small files means much slower rsync.
>>   Due to connection turnaround latency, I assume?  (I've never looked at
>> the rsync protocol)  If that's the case, then I stand very much
>> corrected, thank you.  I was going from the same logic regarding mbox
>> vs. maildir in the context of backups.  One new message delivered and a
>> 400MB mail spool gets backed up again..
>>
>>           -Dave
>>
> Rsync adds some latency as it indexes and compares files on both ends.
> Obviously it would take more time to compare 40,000 1K files then 1000 40K
> files even though the data size is similar. It would still be better than
> tar/bzip/scp which has to compress everything and transfer the lot every time.
> 

Maildirsync it an "Online synchronizer for Maildir-format mailboxes"
See http://hacks.dlux.hu/maildirsync/

Sot.