jepoy wrote: > hi guys, > i just want to ask if its ok to backup /var/spool/mail without stopping > mail services. Im doing a backup solution wherein i would like to backup > the mails every midnight.Do i need stop mail services before backup or > its not an issue ?
That depends on what kind of mailbox format you have. If you're using maildirs or something similar, you're in luck. If you're still using mboxes, you may have locking issues. If an email comes in while you're in the middle of backing stuff up, you could have a mailbox whose partial contents you're saving into your backup. It will be a corrupt mbox with a portion of the mail at the end, easily recoverable, but a damned nuisance. It would be safer to shut down mail service while you back up in that case; at any rate, any decent MTA attempting to send mail to your system while it's down will have the sense to queue the mail and then try again a few hours later, by which time your backup should be done. I seriously doubt that you have more than a thousand users and even if you do I doubt that more than a few of them will consume more than a couple megabytes of mail at any given time, so the backup process may take more like a few minutes. -- To err is human, but to foul things up takes a computer. And to make a total disastrous mess takes a computer *operated* by a human. http://stormwyrm.blogspot.com/ _________________________________________________ Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [email protected] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Read the Guidelines: http://linux.org.ph/lists Searchable Archives: http://archives.free.net.ph
