Well for the purpose of upgrading your server, you could do the following:

  1. Rsync your maildir directories to a backup directory
  2. repeat rsync again so most of your changed files have been synced
  3. shut down your dovecot and smtp servers
  4. rsync one more time - should be relatively fast
  5. restart your dovecot and smtp servers

Otherwise, just schedule downtime and use whatever backup method you prefer. You will probably want to backup and then leave dovecot and smtp server down until you've completed the dovecot upgrade anyway, so you may as well schedule downtime for the entire process and do the dovecot upgrade between steps 4 and 5 above.

Natu




On 3/10/19 10:07 PM, Aki Tuomi via dovecot wrote:
I'd say the correct term is not broken but missing. backup was implemented in later version. 

With maildir keeping a copy of the content is sufficient backup. 

Aki
On 11 March 2019 03:39 SH Development via dovecot <dovecot@dovecot.org> wrote:


Ok, so for lack of any other information, am I to conclude that the doveadm backup command is broken in 2.0.9?  I have been through the wiki for it back and forth and cannot make it work.

Yes, I need to upgrade, there is no question, but I won’t do that without a maildir backup.  I would prefer to use the built-in dovecot mechanisms for that than something else.

Jeff

On Mar 10, 2019, at 12:09 PM, SH Development via dovecot < dovecot@dovecot.org> wrote:
Okay then.  Is there a document on how to do that in place?  That was one of the reasons I was trying to do a backup first.

Jeff


On Mar 10, 2019, at 4:12 AM, Aki Tuomi via dovecot < dovecot@dovecot.org> wrote:
You should upgrade 2.2 first.

Aki
On 10 March 2019 10:45 SH Development via dovecot < dovecot@dovecot.org> wrote:


V 2.0.9

Jeff

On Mar 10, 2019, at 12:07 AM, Aki Tuomi via dovecot < dovecot@dovecot.org> wrote:
What version are you using?

Aki
On 10 March 2019 00:40 SH Development via dovecot < dovecot@dovecot.org> wrote:


Okay, apparently I’m just a complete idiot. Why doesn’t this work?

doveadm -Dv backup -u user Maildir:/mnt/maelstrombackups/vmailbackup

With user being the actual user name.

No backup is created, it just shows me the usage text.

Jeff

On Feb 20, 2019, at 10:11 PM, SH Development < listaccount@starionline.com> wrote:

I am having trouble locating examples of how to use doveadm backup. All the examples I see are for sync. I simply want to create a backup to a network volume of the email server's vmail folders. The goal here is to have a reasonably current backup should the main drive on the email server go south.

We currently authenticate our users from a mysql database. User’s mailboxes are stored as domainname/username/Maildir

I assume what I will wind up on the network volume is a duplicate directory structure as the vmail folder on the email server?

Can someone help get me started here?

Jeff 

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Aki Tuomi


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Aki Tuomi



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Aki Tuomi