-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Monday, 22.08.2005 at 22:53 -0400, Jason 'XenoPhage' Frisvold wrote:
> [ ... some are new mail messages coming in ... ] I've often wondered about this. I back up the mail spools in /var/mail of the appropriate server and occasionally get a 'STRANGE' from it because one of the spools changes during the course of the backup job. What is considered the Correct Way to handle backing up files which are so dynamic? Our mail spools are pretty quiet at the time the backup runs, but some of you out there must have more traffic than us ... My thoughts: 1. Just put up with it: spools that are changing will result in a backup which is probably not of any use once in a while. This is probably fine, unless there is a large amount of mail coming in at the time the backup runs; 2. Make a policy decision not to backup mail spools at all. There are often reasons for making such a policy, although it's not something that we do; 3. Copy in a robust fashion from the mail spools to a temporary location prior to the backup job, so that these copies of the spools will not change; then backup the copies rather than the 'live' spools. The "robust fashion" would work in a similar way to how locking mail spools operates when appending/deleting messages. If option #3, has anyone actually done that? How? Dave. - -- Dave Ewart [EMAIL PROTECTED] Computing Manager, Cancer Epidemiology Unit Cancer Research UK / Oxford University PGP: CC70 1883 BD92 E665 B840 118B 6E94 2CFD 694D E370 N 51.7518, W 1.2016 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFDCttDbpQs/WlN43ARAuFeAKDnef5GW2pZ/08qHnr1l1qYJKYhtACg0gkV 14YTwNMAJYmalmCvByQZopE= =kvg8 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
