dovecot - Nov 2010 - Backing up dovecot

Hello people,

Well, what the subjects says :-)
I have a dovecot/Horde installation and would like to know :

a. How safe will I be backing up dovecot

b. What folders/files to backup

Let me see now; I am running dovecot v1.2.15
Here's a dump of "dovecot -n" :

----------------------------------------------------------------
[root at mailgate ~]# dovecot -n
# 1.2.15: /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf
# OS: Linux 2.6.18-194.17.1.el5PAE i686 CentOS release 5.5 (Final) ext3
base_dir: /var/run/dovecot/
log_path: /var/log/dovecot/dovecot.log
info_log_path: /var/log/dovecot/dovecot-info.log
ssl: required
ssl_parameters_regenerate: 48
verbose_ssl: yes
login_dir: /var/run/dovecot//login
login_executable: /usr/local/dovecot/libexec/dovecot/imap-login
login_greeting: * Dovecot ready *
login_max_processes_count: 32
mail_location: maildir:/var/MailRoot/domains/%d/%n/Maildir
mail_plugins: zlib
auth default:
  verbose: yes
  debug: yes
  debug_passwords: yes
  passdb:
    driver: passwd-file
    args: /etc/dovecot/passwd
  passdb:
    driver: pam
  userdb:
    driver: static
    args: uid=vmail gid=vmail home=/home/vmail/%u
  userdb:
    driver: passwd
----------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you all,


Best regards,

spyros




----
"I merely function as a channel that filters 
music through the chaos of noise"
 - Vangelis

Spyros Tsiolis wrote on 11/12/2010:
> a. How safe will I be backing up dovecot
> b. What folders/files to backup
It's enough to backup your Dovecot configuration files (usually the
folder /etc/dovecot or /usr/local/etc/dovecot) and your SSL certs (if
used).

You should also backup your mailboxes (/var/MailRoot/domains) on a
regular basis (hourly/daily with rsync for example).

If you must reinstall your server you have to install Dovecot and
restore your Dovecot config files from your backup. That should be
all.

P.S.: Depending of your authentication backend (database, PAM, LDAP..)
you should also backup these informations so that users can login
after a restore with the same credentials as before.

--
Daniel