[Dovecot] Incoming mails + remote backup

[Brian Candler]

On Tue, Apr 06, 2010 at 04:59:11AM -0700, minim wrote:
> Is it possible to configure MTA to deliver to remote servers? 

Certainly. For any complex mail delivery requirements, I'd say that exim is
your friend.  You can set up routers and transports to do whatever you like.

This is out of the scope of dovecot of course, but the exim-users mailing
list will be helpful if you get stuck.

> I have tried with imapsync and able to transfer single mail account to
> remote server. Is there a way to transfer whole server's mail account using
> imapsync? 

I don't think so, not without some major frigs; you'd need the login
credentials of each user to establish the imap connections.

This is where filesystem-level synchronisation like unison may help.  I'd
strongly recommend Maildir format, and you may get problems if users
frequently access their mailboxes on both the primary and the backup
servers, because you may end up with conflicting changes made at both sides. 
Using Maildir, no mail should be lost, but there may be conflicts over
metadata like message flags and UIDs.

If you're keeping the backup just for disaster recovery, it should be fine.

(I use unison for syncing Maildirs between my desktop and laptop all the
time, but I access the Maildirs directly using mutt, rather than via IMAP)

B.