Calvin Gordon wrote:
I use the tar/bzip method, and have been wondering about the rsync. All
my users have system accounts on the dovecot server, and use Maildir
format. If i rsync the mail to another box where the users do not have
system accounts, will the ownerships/ permissions etc. be goofed up ?
Correctly, or incorrectly, I've been using tar to preserve all that
information.
rsync preserves all that too, but you should preserve uid->username and
gid->groupname mappings too, otherwise all that information is not as
useful. Saving the password files is usually sufficient, assuming you
are doing backups for disaster recovery, and not just for the occasional
restore after an "oops, I deleted all my mail!" phonecall.
rsnapshot is nice too. It uses rsync and hard links to make as many
snapshots of the filesystem as you like. This creates many 'restore
points' with total disk usage being just over what a single full backup
would take.
Ken
Cal Gordon
Sotiris Tsimbonis wrote:
Scott Silva wrote, On 10/30/2008 12:34 AM:
on 10-29-2008 3:18 PM Dave McGuire spake the following:
On Oct 29, 2008, at 5:32 PM, Arkadiusz Miskiewicz wrote:
What is the best way to do a (server-side) backup of all mail in a
user's mail?
I usually just rsync the /home directories to another server. The
inital sync
can take a while, but it gets faster after there is a base to work
from.
...and it's much less painful if you're using maildir instead of
mbox!
Not for rsyncing. Tons of small files means much slower rsync.
Due to connection turnaround latency, I assume? (I've never
looked at
the rsync protocol) If that's the case, then I stand very much
corrected, thank you. I was going from the same logic regarding mbox
vs. maildir in the context of backups. One new message delivered and a
400MB mail spool gets backed up again..
-Dave
Rsync adds some latency as it indexes and compares files on both ends.
Obviously it would take more time to compare 40,000 1K files then
1000 40K
files even though the data size is similar. It would still be better
than
tar/bzip/scp which has to compress everything and transfer the lot
every time.
Maildirsync it an "Online synchronizer for Maildir-format mailboxes"
See http://hacks.dlux.hu/maildirsync/
Sot.
--
Ken Anderson
Pacific.Net
