Backup $CONFIDIRECTORY/proc?

[Bron Gondwana]

On Mon, Jul 30, 2007 at 11:20:46AM -0700, Ross Boylan wrote:
> http://cyrusimap.web.cmu.edu/twiki/bin/view/Cyrus/Backup doesn't mention
> it, but should I backup $CONFIGDIRECTORY/proc?

No - the only things in there are files showing which process IDs are
connected by which user and what folder is currently selected.  There's
no point restoring that.

> That's really a two part question: should I back up the directory, and
> should I backup the contents?  I'm guessing the answers are yes and no
> respectively.

Well, your restore process is going to want to create that directory,
and preferably with the correct permissions.

Our startup scripts actually create it as a symlink into a tmpfs so that
updates to proc files don't hit the disk at all.  The files are very
small, so there's no memory pressure from it, and they are pointless to
keep even across a Cyrus restart.

> I'm also curious whether the absence or presence of those items in a
> backup could cause trouble on restore.  I suspect the proc directory
> itself needs to be present, and I wonder if the items in the directory
> could confuse cyrus into think some non-existent processes exist.

No, I'm pretty sure cyrus never reads them - they're just there for the
admin or external tools to read.  Most of our perl tools do the same
thing by setting $0 instead, but the proc file solution is very
portable.

Bron.