Calvin Gordon wrote:
I use the tar/bzip method, and have been wondering about the rsync. All my users have system accounts on the dovecot server, and use Maildir format. If i rsync the mail to another box where the users do not have system accounts, will the ownerships/ permissions etc. be goofed up ?
Correctly, or incorrectly, I've been using tar to preserve all that information.
rsync preserves all that too, but you should preserve uid->username and gid->groupname mappings too, otherwise all that information is not as useful. Saving the password files is usually sufficient, assuming you are doing backups for disaster recovery, and not just for the occasional restore after an "oops, I deleted all my mail!" phonecall.
rsnapshot is nice too. It uses rsync and hard links to make as many snapshots of the filesystem as you like. This creates many 'restore points' with total disk usage being just over what a single full backup would take.
Ken
Cal Gordon
Sotiris Tsimbonis wrote:
Scott Silva wrote, On 10/30/2008 12:34 AM:
on 10-29-2008 3:18 PM Dave McGuire spake the following:
>> 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
On Oct 29, 2008, at 5:32 PM, Arkadiusz Miskiewicz wrote: 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..
-DaveRsync 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.
-- Ken Anderson Pacific.Net