how to backup a cyrus server?

[Andrew Morgan]

On Mon, 4 Dec 2006, Rafael Mahecha wrote:

> I recently moved all my users from proprietary wemail (using local 
> sendmail) to latest cyrus and sendmail using lmtp.
>
> I used to use tivoli to backup the old server (which was ok since no 
> data bases were involved)... but since cyrus has databases and such, I 
> am concern about file-locking and database corruption.
>
> What is the best way to back up the server? shutdown cyrus for a while, 
> then snap shot it, and then back up to tivoli.... or should I just be 
> able to back up the running server directly to tivoli?
>
> what other software can I use to backup?

Check out the Cyrus Wiki page at:

   http://cyrusimap.web.cmu.edu/twiki/bin/view/Cyrus/Backup

Most people just make a regular backup of the filesystem using whatever 
tools they normally use.  The only "trick" is to export your mailboxes.db 
to a flat text file in order to back it up (which you should be doing 
periodically anyways).

It is probably not worth the downtime to actually shutdown Cyrus in order 
to get a consistent backup of the entire mail spool.  So what if a few 
files change while the backup is happening?  Unless you have really 
unreliable hardware, you'll create more downtime doing the backups than 
you'll ever prevent by having a consistent backup.  :)

 	Andy