[Dovecot] Backup Maildir
Hi All,
I'm currently doing nightly full backups of /home. I'm not sure if a
full back up is the best way to do backups. I know with my
fileserver i do weekly full backup and daily incremental which would
file on those type of files. I guess my question to the group is,
how do you guys backup Maildir? whats the best way of doing it?
--
Gabe Granger
Pancentric results-driven communications and e-solutions
+44 (0) 20 8877 0230 http://www.pancentric.com
* On 06/10/05 16:06 +0100, Gabe Granger wrote:
Hi All,
I'm currently doing nightly full backups of /home. I'm not sure if a full back up is the best way to do backups. I know with my fileserver i do weekly full backup and daily incremental which would file on those type of files. I guess my question to the group is, how do you guys backup Maildir? whats the best way of doing it?
This is an interesting question, especially because it relates to mail!
I am a systems admin, but this is one area that I seriously flop in.
How do you backup e-mails for users when during the backup, they are
deleting the e-mails from the Maildir (POPping) and at the same, and
the SMTP server is also writing to it. This is very real on a busy
mail server.
So, how do people make backups of client's e-mails (Maildir)???
-Wash
http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html
--
+======================================================================+
|\ _,,,---,,_ | Odhiambo Washington
On 06/10/05, Odhiambo Washington (wash@wananchi.com) wrote:
- On 06/10/05 16:06 +0100, Gabe Granger wrote:
I'm currently doing nightly full backups of /home. I'm not sure if a
full back up is the best way to do backups. I know with my
fileserver i do weekly full backup and daily incremental which would
file on those type of files. I guess my question to the group is,
how do you guys backup Maildir? whats the best way of doing it? ...
How do you backup e-mails for users when during the backup, they are deleting the e-mails from the Maildir (POPping) and at the same, and the SMTP server is also writing to it. ...
One way was along the lines of our discussion some time ago on Exim list, to deliver to either a global or per-user backup pool of messages which are only deleted after the backup system has seen them (or possibly deleted by the backup itself).
At one client we use the global backup system, and store the headers in an sql database, together with the exim message id and the md5sum of the file.
Not very good for restoring mailboxes/maildirs though. Sorry for the digression!
Cheers Rory
--
Rory Campbell-Lange
rory@campbell-lange.net
- On 06/10/05 21:20 +0100, Rory Campbell-Lange wrote:
On 06/10/05, Odhiambo Washington (wash@wananchi.com) wrote:
- On 06/10/05 16:06 +0100, Gabe Granger wrote:
I'm currently doing nightly full backups of /home. I'm not sure if a
full back up is the best way to do backups. I know with my
fileserver i do weekly full backup and daily incremental which would
file on those type of files. I guess my question to the group is,
how do you guys backup Maildir? whats the best way of doing it? ...How do you backup e-mails for users when during the backup, they are deleting the e-mails from the Maildir (POPping) and at the same, and the SMTP server is also writing to it. ...
One way was along the lines of our discussion some time ago on Exim list, to deliver to either a global or per-user backup pool of messages which are only deleted after the backup system has seen them (or possibly deleted by the backup itself).
Yes, I can do that perfectly - delivering to a per-user backup Maildir somewhere, but remember that in this case, we have the overhead of dual delivery and a separate storage ;)
At one client we use the global backup system, and store the headers in an sql database, together with the exim message id and the md5sum of the file.
Not very good for restoring mailboxes/maildirs though. Sorry for the digression!
So, what happens if the client was to ask you for a backup of mail that he received last June? ;)
Best regards,
Odhiambo Washington
Systems Admin,
Wananchi Online Ltd.Are you hosting your domain name with the leaders??: See http://webhosting.info/webhosts/tophosts/Country/KE
DISCLAIMER : http://ns2.wananchi.com/~wash/Email/disclaimer.txt ----------------------------------+----------------------------------------- Odhiambo WASHINGTON . WANANCHI ONLINE LTD (Nairobi, KE) http://www.wananchi.com/email/ . 1ere Etage, Loita Hse, Loita St., Mobile: (+254) 722 743 223 . # 10286, 00100 NAIROBI ----------------------------------+----------------------------------------- Who can say, "I have kept my heart pure; I am clean and without sin"? Proverbs 20:9
On 06/10/05, Odhiambo Washington (wash@wananchi.com) wrote:
- On 06/10/05 21:20 +0100, Rory Campbell-Lange wrote:
On 06/10/05, Odhiambo Washington (wash@wananchi.com) wrote:
- On 06/10/05 16:06 +0100, Gabe Granger wrote:
I'm currently doing nightly full backups of /home. I'm not sure if a
full back up is the best way to do backups. .... Not very good for restoring mailboxes/maildirs though. Sorry for the digression!So, what happens if the client was to ask you for a backup of mail that he received last June? ;)
SELECT
*
FROM
mail
WHERE
user = client
and
dateinserted >= '2004-06-01'
and
dateinserted < '2004-07-01'We can send the client the list of headers from the sql query and they can pick the messages they need, then we pull that back from tape. We back a month's pool of messages to tape over smb every week.
Obviously, this backup system has more to do with proving that the office in question got/sent an email than pulling back a whole Maildir/Mailbox.
Rory
--
Rory Campbell-Lange
rory@campbell-lange.net
How do you backup e-mails for users when during the backup, they are deleting the e-mails from the Maildir (POPping) and at the same, and the SMTP server is also writing to it.
We're running Solaris on both the Dovecot and backup server. As backup software, we're using Veritas Netbackup. At this time, we just backup the Maildir data. I think the change that an open file is being backupped is very small, but besides that, our users mostly want to restore mail from a few days earlier.
On Solaris there is the 'fssnap' tool to make a snapshot of the filesystem. I could create a snapshot when the backup starts and delete it afterwards. An other solution could be mirroring the filesystem with Solaris Volume Manager. When the backup starts, break the mirror and restore it afterwards.
-Remy
Am Freitag, 7. Oktober 2005 08:30 schrieb Remy Zandwijk:
the Maildir data. I think the change that an open file is being backupped is very small, but besides that, our users mostly want to
Am I wrong or are the files within a maildir more or less immutable?
As I understood it they get renamed and moved around a bit, but are not altered.
So simply backing up the maildir as a bunch of files and dirs should be pretty safe, I think.
Greetings,
Gunter
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How do you backup e-mails for users when during the backup, they are deleting the e-mails from the Maildir (POPping) and at the same, and the SMTP server is also writing to it.
We're running Solaris on both the Dovecot and backup server. As backup software, we're using Veritas Netbackup. At this time, we just backup the Maildir data. I think the change that an open file is being backupped is very small, but besides that, our users mostly want to restore mail from a few days earlier.
On Solaris there is the 'fssnap' tool to make a snapshot of the filesystem. I could create a snapshot when the backup starts and delete it afterwards. An other solution could be mirroring the filesystem with Solaris Volume Manager. When the backup starts, break the mirror and restore it afterwards.
FreeBSD 5 also has a snapshot option for filesystems. 'dump' even has an option to create a snapshot just before it dumps that file system so you don't have to worry about changing files during the backup...
-philip
Gabe Granger wrote:
Hi All,
I'm currently doing nightly full backups of /home. I'm not sure if a
full back up is the best way to do backups. I know with my fileserver i do weekly full backup and daily incremental which would file on those type of files. I guess my question to the group is, how do you guys backup Maildir? whats the best way of doing it?
I backup the machine using Rsync, set to move any changed or deleted files to a date-stamped folder. That way I always have a live tree of the last backup (effectively a full backup) and daily directories of changes, without the network overhead.
-- Curtis Maloney cmaloney@cardgate.net
On Thu, 2005-10-06 at 16:06 +0100, Gabe Granger wrote:
Hi All,
I'm currently doing nightly full backups of /home. I'm not sure if a
full back up is the best way to do backups. I know with my
fileserver i do weekly full backup and daily incremental which would
file on those type of files. I guess my question to the group is,
how do you guys backup Maildir? whats the best way of doing it?--
Gabe Granger
Pancentric results-driven communications and e-solutions
+44 (0) 20 8877 0230 http://www.pancentric.com
lvm snapshot
participants (8)
-
Curtis Maloney
-
Gabe Granger
-
Gunter Ohrner
-
nodata
-
Odhiambo Washington
-
Philip Hallstrom
-
Remy Zandwijk
-
Rory Campbell-Lange