I started to investigate using doveadm backup to backup my mail system. I have a small number of users and the mail store is not large. It uses maildir format. I setup a test system that is not connected to the internet and started up dovecot. I used the following command to backup one user:

doveadm backup -u ben remote:test

ben is the user is in the mail store. Test is the actual server name. That worked just fine. The maildir was copied completely (as best as I can tell with ls). Then I tried the second user:

doveadm backup -u jean remote:test

This gives 2 error messages:

doveadm(jean)[]<McRYOFI0jGN1MwAAmC+70w>: Error: Mailbox INBOX: Failed to get attribute vendor/vendor.dovecot/pvt/server/sieve/files/.dovecot: Mailbox attributes not enabled

doveadm(jean)[]<0IwxIlI0jGMgUwAAZU03Dg>: Error: Remote command returned error 65: ssh test doveadm dsync-server -ujean -U

In addition, the maildir directories are created, but there are no emails in any of them (e.g., cur). What is the problem with the 2nd and why does it behave differently from the first?

-- Doug