Hello,
I manage a small number of email accounts for a voluntary organisation on a shared hosting platform.
$ dovecot --version 2.3.13 (89f716dc2)
I would like to keep automated local backups, but do not have access to doveadm.
I have seen a couple of forum posts where users have have suggested that using rsync to backup m(d)box folders can corrupt dovecot's indexes, but there is no further explanation, and this is apparently not a problem for maildir. Our host seems to use mdbox.
Does doveadm provide some sort of transaction/locking mechanism to prevent consistency problems?
Others seem to recommend using tar but I don't see what difference that should make.
Given that cpanel backups (provided as tar.gz archives of the home directory) include mail/ and seem to be copies of the filesystem at a particular time (though not true "snapshots" as such), aren't these just as "safe" as an rsync-ed backup?
Can anyone confirm/deny/shed any light on the issue(s), if indeed any?
Many thanks, Gareth