[Dovecot] Backup Maildir

[Remy Zandwijk]

>>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