On Thu, 21 Oct 2004, Faisal wrote:
I am changing my linux distro .. to slackware from fendora core .. but dovecot/postfix will remain the same , what are the steps involved inbacking up all my users mailboxes & then resotring again .. i have never done this sucessfully so please help me out .. users are authenticated via /etc/passwd
First of all, may I suggest to you to read a book about unix/posix systems and to check some online sources of information, such as the documentation of your MTA. Only you can know where you store mailboxes and how the software on your machine has been configured.
Check the configuration files of your MTA (sendmail, postfix?) and dovecot's configuration file, dovecot.conf to see where mail is delivered; the inboxes can probably be found in /var/mail or thereabouts depending on the exact OS and MTA you are using.
If you have never done this before and don't know much about unix-like systems, practice backing up and restoring on non-production servers first. Really.