Backup questions...

[Nathanael D. Noblet]

I know this has been asked a few times. I've gone over the questions,
but am wanting to make sure I fully understand some parts, to make sure
what I am doing is actually useful.

I have a Cyrus installation (RHEL 4 rpm). It works, all setup etc. It
automatically creates a gz textfile of the mailboxlist files every day
etc.

I would now like to create an offsite backup of the two directories I've
read need backing up. I've used rsync many a time for stuff like this so
figure I'll use it again. I don't want downtime to do the backup, so
need to know what kinds of problems can happen by running an rsync of
the spool directory.

Obviously if the rsync takes anything but moments, there is a good
chance that it won't catch some of the mail. I'm okay with that. The
rsync will run each night, and if it isn't all there that's okay.
Missing a handful of emails is not a problem in our books. So if I have
the /var/lib/imap directory, which contains the berkeley dbs, and the
text version of the mailbox list. Plus a near recent copy of the spool
directories. I would be able to pretty much restore a copy roughly 24
hours old in the case of a major failure. 

Are these assumptions correct? Or not stopping the cyrus server will
make my spool directory grow a litter of kittens and make it impossible
to restore a functioning server albeit potentially missing a few
emails...


Any feedback would be useful.

-- 
Nathanael D. Noblet
Gnat Solutions
http://www.gnat.ca/
T 250.385.4613
C 250.893.4613