[Dovecot] Semi-OT: Backing up maildir

[Lorens]

On Thu, May 11, 2006 at 08:44:06PM +1000, Karl Latiss wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-05-10 at 19:29 -0500, Shayne Hardesty wrote:
> > How do you guys back up your maildir?
> 
> I've had great success with rsync and hard link based backup.
> 
> I've customised my own solution based on the scripts found at
> http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/

Same here, I referred to this just yesterday in the "Recommended
FS" thread.

One note : Shayne is also guarding against file disappearance
where the client is responsible somehow, which in my experience
is much more frequent.

For IMAP the rsync backup means getting back all mail until last
backup, except for some percentage of deleted ones, which isn't
bad but not quite perfect.

For POP the rsync backup means telling the client "you can get
back things you had received but not popped at midnight every
day", which isn't very useful.

Ideal protection is copying incoming mail as it arrives (in
addition to the periodic backup), and that's an MTA problem.

HTH