Quoting Roger Thomas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Quoting Turbo Fredriksson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > >> The users maildirectory/-ies is a whole other thing though. That's >> 'easy'... I do a full backup every night (to tape). > > Can you recommend a suitable model (tape backup) for this. > - How long do you normally take to backup your /var/qmail ?
Are you talking about /var/qmail or /var/mail ?! In /var/qmail is all the Qmail specific files (queue and config files) and in /var/mail is all the mail boxes... Doing a FULL backup of /var/mail (420k files, ~19Gb) takes six and a half hour with my backup system/tape (IBM Ultrium 1). I'm not doing a backup of the /var/qmail/queue directory AT ALL. Only the /var/qmail/control (at the same time as I do a backup of the system). I only do a FULL backup once a week, and incrementals every day. In case of a disk crash, the users MIGHT see duplicate files (files they HAVE read, but which is marked unread). This because of the naming of files in a Maildir. A mail before and after reading: ----- s n i p ----- [EMAIL PROTECTED]:/var/mail/fredriksson/turbo# ll -n new/1135006831.25310_0.aurora,S=2420 -rw-rw---- 1 1000 8 2420 Dec 19 16:40 new/1135006831.25310_0.aurora,S=2420 [EMAIL PROTECTED]:/var/mail/fredriksson/turbo# ll -n cur/1135006831.25310_0.aurora,S=2420:2, -rw-rw---- 1 1000 8 2420 Dec 19 16:40 cur/1135006831.25310_0.aurora,S=2420:2, ----- s n i p ----- Not only does it move from one directory to another, it also changes suffix... I don't care much about that (I can't 'afford' a full backup every day as it is today - it takes way to long!). Chances are slim (I run RAID5 with a hotspare), but I and my users just have to live with this IF I have to do a restore. > - Does qmail-ldap needs to be stopped while backup is running ? No. In neither case. IF you're using Maildir... If you use m(ail)box, then I'd recommend shutting down both qmail AND any POP/IMAP servers during the backup. > - During backing up process, will the activity affect network performance ? No, since my backup system/tape is on the same machine as the mail server. It will however affect the SYSTEM performance because my backup software (Bacula) uses quite a lot of CPU when writing to tape. I don't (yet) have a dedicated backup (server)host. I'm working on it, and then it will probably affect the network. But I was planning on putting the new backup server machine on it's separate 'backbone' (a local network BEHIND all the machines with separate switches etc) not reachable by live IP's, but on 'eth1/192.168.x.x'... Then it won't affect the network performance. Not the one that Qmail care about/need any way. -- spy Marxist critical Peking Nazi DES president jihad pits KGB [Hello to all my fans in domestic surveillance] NSA attack Ft. Bragg Delta Force [See http://www.aclu.org/echelonwatch/index.html for more about this] [Or http://www.europarl.eu.int/tempcom/echelon/pdf/rapport_echelon_en.pdf] If neither of these works, try http://www.aclu.org and search for echelon.
