taras@elantech.ru wrote:

I think, it's not bad idea doing backup while delivering, i.e. create backup mailboxes for each user and tune MTA to deliver "blind carbon copy" to such shadow mailbox (in postfix loook at http://www.postfix.org/postconf.5.html#recipient_bcc_maps parameter).

You'll lose all the changes that users had made (moving messages from one mailbox to another, for example).

Cheers, -jkt

-- cd /local/pub && more beer > /dev/mouth

forgive my nievness, and also for top posting - as Ive lost the OP - seeing as someones raised the issue of backup ideas and tips - is there anything fundamentally wrong with rsync to another (either local or remote location)?

thx glenn On Tuesday 02 May 2006 19:24, Jan Kundrát wrote:

taras@elantech.ru wrote:

...

I think, it's not bad idea doing backup while delivering, i.e. create backup mailboxes for each user and tune MTA to deliver "blind carbon copy" to such shadow mailbox (in postfix loook at http://www.postfix.org/postconf.5.html#recipient_bcc_maps parameter).

You'll lose all the changes that users had made (moving messages from one mailbox to another, for example).

Cheers, -jkt

Glenn Davy wrote:

...

forgive my nievness, and also for top posting - as Ive lost the OP - seeing as someones raised the issue of backup ideas and tips - is there anything fundamentally wrong with rsync to another (either local or remote location)?

Well, there might be one issue, IMHO - what happens if you're backing up a huge mailbox (say over 1GB) fortunately my clients data is still all quite small - the entire set wouldnt be half that yet.. and a message from the beginning gets deleted)? ... but yes what if. I was wondering about that. I took mine offline for the initial rsync (which runs accross the pacific), and now only changes are backed up - which is quite quick - I guess its good luck that this hasnt happened yet, only a matter of time though I'd say that you'll have to employ the same locking scheme as you've configured Dovecot to do and then you should be pretty safe.

On Tuesday 02 May 2006 20:02, Jan Kundrát wrote: thanks - I'll look into this - I havent given it much thought

I'm not sure about the performance (and that's the whole mailbox-maildir flame)...

I'm not a backup guru, though :)

Cheers, -jkt

On Tue, 2006-05-02 at 05:28, Charles Marcus wrote:

...

...

forgive my nievness, and also for top posting - as Ive lost the OP - seeing as someones raised the issue of backup ideas and tips - is there anything fundamentally wrong with rsync to another (either local or remote location)?

...

Well, there might be one issue, IMHO - what happens if you're backing up a huge mailbox (say over 1GB) and a message from the beginning gets deleted)?

This is why I love LVM - snapshots...

Snapshots don't solve the problem of inconsistent files, they just shrink the timing window when the copy appears - and if you are using LVM2 , snapshots only recently started working. Then you have the problem of restoring an old message without clobbering current ones if they are all in the same file. Maildir format makes most of these issues go away and you can use something simple like backuppc (http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/) to manage online rsync-based backups.

-- Les Mikesell lesmikesell@gmail.com