[Dovecot] Script: Moving Maildirs between servers

[Giuliano Gavazzi]

On T 3 Feb, 2009, at 18:40 , Eduardo M KALINOWSKI wrote:

> Charles Marcus wrote:
>> So you're rsyncing a live mail system with no problems?
>>
>
> I do it every day for backups. :-)
>
>> I've been tempted to start doing this, but I was under the  
>> impression it
>> could be risky (cause file corruption)?
>>
>
> I can imagine that one could end up in the backup copy with an
> incomplete/corrupt file (but this will be fixed in the next rsync,
> hopefully), but I don't see how rsync could corrupt the original files
> in the mail server.

I'd say that even an incomplete file is very unlikely, for message  
files at least, while it might happen for files that are updated  
(uidlists etc). Rsync builds a partial (in the latest versions) or  
complete (in the old ones, pre 3) list of files before starting the  
transfer, so by the time it starts the transfer, message files, which  
existed when the list was built, are likely complete. It is quite  
possible that a file will disappear (likely renamed) before rsync has  
a chance to transfer it. That's not a problem though.
Consistency of the backup is another matter though, and requires a  
quiescent mail system. For recovery of inadvertently deleted messages  
this is not necessary.

g