I am running Dovecot with Postfix on a FreeBSD machine. There are problems with the drive and I cannot depend on it. Dovecot saves all mail in IMAP format. I want to back up the mail folders, install a new HD, install the latest FreeBSD OS and then reinstall my programs. Reinstalling Dovecot is simple, but how do I reinstall the IMAP folders? Can Dovecot backup the folders onto a CD and then import them when I reinstall it? My mail is kept under ?/var/mail/vmail?. Should I just back up that entire directory structure and then restore it later? Thanks! -- Jerry
On Thu, 20 Oct 2016 09:18:12 -0400 Jerry <jerry at seibercom.net> wrote:> I am running Dovecot with Postfix on a FreeBSD machine. There are > problems with the drive and I cannot depend on it. Dovecot saves all > mail in IMAP format. I want to back up the mail folders, install a new > HD, install the latest FreeBSD OS and then reinstall my programs. > Reinstalling Dovecot is simple, but how do I reinstall the IMAP > folders? Can Dovecot backup the folders onto a CD and then import them > when I reinstall it? My mail is kept under ?/var/mail/vmail?. Should I > just back up that entire directory structure and then restore it > later?That should work (just make sure Dovecot is not running to not have a race between your backup software and the IMAP server and clients). Alternatively you can use `dsync` to perform backup with a native Dovecot tool. It's able to sync mailboxes of any Dovecot user -- including synchronizing a mailbox to an empty (yet) spool. You'll need to do a bit of shell scripting which would spin around calling `doveadm user *` and feeding its output to something like while read user; do \ dest="/var/backup/dovecot/$user"; mkdir -p "$dest" && chown vmail:vmail "$dest" \ && chmod 0755 "$dest" dsync -u "$user" backup "maildir:$dest" \ done Note that you will only need this if you don't want to shut down Dovecot to copy its mail spool out.
> On October 20, 2016 at 4:45 PM Konstantin Khomoutov <flatworm at users.sourceforge.net> wrote: > > > On Thu, 20 Oct 2016 09:18:12 -0400 > Jerry <jerry at seibercom.net> wrote: > > > I am running Dovecot with Postfix on a FreeBSD machine. There are > > problems with the drive and I cannot depend on it. Dovecot saves all > > mail in IMAP format. I want to back up the mail folders, install a new > > HD, install the latest FreeBSD OS and then reinstall my programs. > > Reinstalling Dovecot is simple, but how do I reinstall the IMAP > > folders? Can Dovecot backup the folders onto a CD and then import them > > when I reinstall it? My mail is kept under ?/var/mail/vmail?. Should I > > just back up that entire directory structure and then restore it > > later? > > That should work (just make sure Dovecot is not running to not have a > race between your backup software and the IMAP server and clients). > > Alternatively you can use `dsync` to perform backup with a native > Dovecot tool. It's able to sync mailboxes of any Dovecot user -- > including synchronizing a mailbox to an empty (yet) spool. > You'll need to do a bit of shell scripting which would spin around > calling `doveadm user *` and feeding its output to something like > > while read user; do \ > dest="/var/backup/dovecot/$user"; > mkdir -p "$dest" && chown vmail:vmail "$dest" \ > && chmod 0755 "$dest" > dsync -u "$user" backup "maildir:$dest" \ > done > > Note that you will only need this if you don't want to shut down > Dovecot to copy its mail spool out.You can also use doveadm backup -A maildir:%u/ Aki