[Dovecot] Backing Up

Scott Silva ssilva at sgvwater.com
Thu Oct 30 00:34:21 EET 2008


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.

-- 
MailScanner is like deodorant...
You hope everybody uses it, and
you notice quickly if they don't!!!!

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