Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2004 13:14:41 +0200 From: Uwe Doering <gemini@geminix.org> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: advice sought on tape backups with cyrus-imap Message-ID: <408A4C21.9040906@geminix.org> In-Reply-To: <20040422085409.550702a3.ebudd@grokking.org> References: <20040422085409.550702a3.ebudd@grokking.org>
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Ed Budd wrote:
> Hi, all:
>
> Hoping for a "reality check" from anyone on the list with experience
> in doing tape backups with cyrus-imap:
>
> I've got FBSD 5.2.1REL acting as a mail server running cyrus-imap and
> wondering what the best (read: safest) method of backing up user
> mailboxes to tape might be. Can I just dump/restore everything
> under /var/imap or is there more to it than this, considering the
> mailboxes are stored in cyrus db format? Does this matter when it comes
> time to restore?
Well, doing on-the-fly backups is always risky, though unfortunately
hard to avoid at 24x7 operations. However, Cyrus IMAP stores the email
messages in separate files. So all that can become inconsistent are the
data structures in the DB files used for management and performance
purposes.
Now, Cyrus IMAP comes with repair tools for these DB files which can
restore missing/inconsistent data from the actual message files. So
backup/restore induced inconsistencies are normally no problem.
Uwe
--
Uwe Doering | EscapeBox - Managed On-Demand UNIX Servers
gemini@geminix.org | http://www.escapebox.net
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