Questions about backup files in /var/imap/db

[Ken Murchison]

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