[Dovecot] backing up maildir dovecot files

[David Mehler]

Hello,

Thanks, if I did:

rsync --force --delete-after -tPrlHpogEAXz /folder/ /backups/newmailstore/

could I then tar up the newmailstore folder with something like tar
zcf without messing anything up?

Thanks.
Dave.



On 2/12/13, Steffen Kaiser <skdovecot at smail.inf.fh-brs.de> wrote:
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> On Mon, 11 Feb 2013, Reindl Harald wrote:
>
>> Am 11.02.2013 22:37, schrieb Steve Litt:
>>> On Mon, 11 Feb 2013 21:47:57 +0100
>>> Reindl Harald <h.reindl at thelounge.net> wrote:
>>>> Am 11.02.2013 21:34, schrieb David Mehler:
>>>>> I'm having to migrate servers. Both are dovecot2 systems. I'm
>>>>> wanting to copy over my mail store from one system to the other.
>>>>> I'd like to preserve dates/times of emails. These are maildir
>>>>> setups on both boxes, I'd like to be as transparent to the end user
>>>>> as possible. I currently have the first dovecot system offline and
>>>>> the second dovecot system is offline.
>>>>
>>>> assuming that BOTH servers are down as fro any other transfers
>>>> like mysql-datadirs and any critical things which should go
>>>> save and fast by preserve attributes:
>>>>
>>>> rsync --force --delete-after -tPrlHpogEAXz /folder/
>>>> root at newserver:/folder/
>>>>
>>>> # -z compress
>>>> # -t timestamps
>>>> # -P progress
>>>> # -r recursive
>>>> # -l links
>>>> # -H hard-links
>>>> # -p permissions
>>>> # -o owner
>>>> # -g group
>>>> # -E executability
>>>> # -A acls
>>>> # -X xtended attributes
>>>
>>> That's how I'd do it also. I think if you didn't mind including -D,
>>> which from my understanding is --special and --devices, neither of
>>> which I'd expect in a maildir, and if you wanted to do your deletion
>>> manually after the fact, would this be equivalent?
>>
>> well, i have them ususally in my "rsync.sh" but did not expect
>> such files in a maildir, but yes it does not hurt
>>
>>> rsync  -PaHAX /folder/
>>>
>>> The man page says -a (--archive) is equivalent to -rlptgoD, and you
>>> have all but D listed up there.
>>>
>>> My thinking on later manually deleting the old maildir, instead of
>>> letting rsync do it, is that if somehow, some weird thing goes wrong, I
>>> have the old one for backup. Who knows, maybe I copied the thing on top
>>> of the wrong other maildir and have to back it out -- I'd have the old
>>> maildir as a reference of which files.
>>
>> you missunderstand "--delete-after"
>>
>> this is for delete files in the TARGET folder which is not
>> or no longer in the source and IMHO very very important
>> if you want sync folders 1:1 because old artefacts can have
>> very bad effects
>>
>> without you merge folders and if i know "hey my source contains
>> exactly what i need, not more and lot less" this is not what i
>> would like and never did in 10 years IT
>
> If you use "--delete-after" you could add "--fuzzy", which theoretically
> could save transfers because of filename renames.
>
> Anyway: Any form of "--delete" is required for Maildir, IMHO, because
> Labels, Tags, Keywords (or whatever the MUA calls it) and status
> information (seen, read, deleted) are reflected by the filename. Hence, if
> one does not "--delete", the _same_ message might pop up in the Maildir
> multiple times but with different status and/or tags. Same applies to new
> messages, because they are storred in <maildir>/new and later moved to
> <maildir>/cur. So one ends with the same message in "new" and in "cur".
>
> - --
> Steffen Kaiser
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