Hi List,
I am very close to migrating from Cyrus to Dovecot (to be more precise from Mac OS X Server 10.5.8 to 10.6.4). The latter is reporting the dovecotd version to be 1.1.20apple0.5. All I have read about dovecot is extremely positive so I am exited to make the switch.
BACKUP: BUT I would like to be sure that I can make a sound backup strategy. For Cyrus i used topicdesk's mailbfr (a script that stops the mailservice and then rsync's the mailstore to a backup location incrementing daily and restarting a complete backup weekly).
This script is not yet ready for Dovecot, but from what I have read it should be as easy as "just" backing up the mail-data (/var/spool/imap/dovecot/mail in OS X), eg. with rsync.
Our current setup is requiring ca. 11 hours for a full (200+ GB) backup (weekly) this is not good for uptime…
RESTORE: Restore should be the same (well reverse) "just" restoring the files and making sure the get the correct permissions. What I am not sure about is the (cyrus specific) need for reconstructing the database, as I have read (on this list) it seems that dovecot is designed better and will "automatically" recognised the restored messages without the need to reconstruct any databases or stopping+restarting the service. Is this really true ,-)? NB.: For restores I plan to always restore to a specific subfolder for the user (eg RESTORED MAIL) as opposed to placing the mails within the folder hierachy
LIVE BACKUP SERVER I have been told, that dovecot provides clever mechanisms for making it possible to synchronise the data to a "hot-spare" server. Both for being able to provide access to the data during breakdown or planned maintenance, but perhaps also to make backups easier (perhaps not needed?)
DELAYED DELETION OF MESSAGES I believe that the feature is called "delayed expunge", a way of not deleting the messages until after an additional delay from the time the user deletes the message. Is this possible in dovecot?
DOCUMENTATION Where would the best FAQ/KB for getting to know dovecot better be, perhaps there have even been written good books (I know old fashioned, but I really like the physical hands on a real book provides ;-)
It's a lot of questions and I hope for good pointers to where I can find more documentation and good feedback from the list.
BR Thomas von Eyben