[Dovecot] Questions about single intance storage

[Terry Carmen]

> So I was thinking that there probably could be some tool that during  
> a user's backup it would write the attachments among the user's  
> other files, so it would be easy to find all of the files needed for  
> a restore. This would of course mean that backups can take a lot  
> more space, because there's no SIS. Perhaps there could be some other


I see.

Instead of writing the links directly to the filesystem, why not keep  
a links list (not a linked list 8-)) file in each directory that  
contains the information for the links that should be there (source,  
dest, attributes), then add an inotify hook in Dovecot to  
create/update/delete the hard links in the directory so they match the  
links list?

The links list would only need to be opened when there's a change and  
could remain closed (and backup-able) at all other times, and  
restoring a links list would immediately trigger the inotify hook and  
regenerate all the required links.

Terry