Questions about backup files in /var/imap/db

[Daniel Qian]

Ken Murchison <ken at oceana.com> said:

> 
> 
> Daniel Qian wrote:
> > Ken Murchison <ken at oceana.com> said:
> > 
> > 
> >>
> >>Daniel Qian wrote:
> >>
> >>>In the /var/imap/db directory of my email server I noticed several 
backup 
> >>>files:
> >>>__db.001  __db.002  __db.003  __db.004  __db.005  log.0000000001 
> >>
> > mailbox.dump
> > 
> >>>I figure I may use these files to restore messages in mailboxes. But I 
> >>>couldn't find any documentation as to how these files are created and 
how 
> >>
> > I 
> > 
> >>>could use them to restore mailboxes. Anyone can give me some ideas how 
> >>
> > they 
> > 
> >>>work or point me to some resources where I can get to know how?
> >>
> >>These files are for restoring the mboxlist.db, they can not be used to 
> >>restore messages.  If you deleted a message file and don't have a 
> >>backup, you're screwed.
> >>
> >>-- 
> >>Kenneth Murchison     Oceana Matrix Ltd.
> >>Software Engineer     21 Princeton Place
> >>716-662-8973 x26      Orchard Park, NY 14127
> >>--PGP Public Key--    http://www.oceana.com/~ken/ksm.pgp
> >>
> >>
> >>
> > 
> > 
> > How could I restore the mboxlist.db from these files? My mboxlist.db file 
is 
> > a small file but how come these __db.00X files are much larger?
> > I tried ctl_mboxlist -u < mailbox.dump but didn't succeed.
> 
> 
> These files are generated by checkpointing the Berkeley DB environment, 
> which includes all databases using BDB.  Read the documentation at 
> http://www.sleepycat.com for more details on checkpointing and the log 
> files.
> 
> -- 
> Kenneth Murchison     Oceana Matrix Ltd.
> Software Engineer     21 Princeton Place
> 716-662-8973 x26      Orchard Park, NY 14127
> --PGP Public Key--    http://www.oceana.com/~ken/ksm.pgp
> 
> 
> 

It confused me by putting all databases using BDB under a imap directory. 
Anyway I am more concerned about a proper way to backup all my mailbox 
messages. It seems to me that I can backup the content under these 
directories:
/var/imap ; where my mailboxes.db resides
/var/spool/imap/user ; suppose I only care about the messages already in user 
mailboxes

So even on a newly installed empty system resulted from a system crash I 
would still be able to recover everything in mailboxes simply by copying back 
these backup files to where they are before the crash and run a reconstruct.
Correct me if I am missing anything.

Thanks for reply

-- 
Best Regards,
Daniel Qian