On Tue, 2010-06-29 at 22:28 +0800, Angelo Chen wrote: > Hi Noel, > > > I use exim4 and it delivers right into ~/.Maildir, so I assume /home contains > all the emails, right? why we need to back up /etc and /var/mail? Thanks, >
No real experience with Exim, last time I looked at it was 10 years ago, but if that's where it stores all received messages, read or new-unread, then /home it is. /etc contains most of your system config stuff, always good idea to back it up, if this is a server it should have no GUI crap installed so it should be fairly small, and /var/vmail was an example only, just like i'd say /var/www if this was a web server, or /var/named if DNS server. /var/mail /var/vmail etc is not applicable to you as you use system and not virtual users. Cheers > > > > You're using system accounts so yes, but I'd hope that if server is on > > any importance you would be doing more than just backing up that. > > /home /etc /var/mail or where ever your MTA stores its mail before users > > get it should be backed up daily at a bare minimum. > > > > If this is a server of importance you should be doing nightly tar > > backups of at least /etc, once a week a full rsync of the entire box, > > and a nightly rsync of your mail store, in your case /home and /var/mail > > (or /var/spool/postfix if you're using that), and use that on a rolling > > 7 day basis... providing you have the space for it on your backup > > server. > > > > Cheers > > >