Re: backing up email / saving maildir on external hard drives
Am Samstag, den 08.08.2015, 21:45 +0530 schrieb Kevin Laurie: Dear Christian, Thanks for your feedback. The HDD will not accept larger than 4GB (as its in FAT format). Its a new external HDD. Thinking of the best format(that would work with Mac , Win and Linux) .seems like a challenge. What's your view on NTFS? And why not exFAT? Thanks Kevin Hi Kevin, you can have multiple partitions even on an external HDD. Or do you really need one big partition which works on all 3 OS? For Win and OS X I'd use exFAT. OS X AFAIK doestn't have write support on NTFS enabled by default. And then for Linux a native FS like ext4,btrfs,XFS or whatever you personally prefer. Though the best would be indeed 3 partitions for each OS. NTFS for Windows And then HFS+ for OS X For example I use on my backup HDD NTFS for Windows and btrfs for my Linux Systems
Re: Using a separate passdb per service
On 08/08/2015 05:57 AM, Edgar Pettijohn wrote: I'm not sure if this would work, but possibly having two separate instances of dovecot with separate configs running may work for you. http://wiki2.dovecot.org/RunningDovecot Hi Edgar, Thank you for your suggestion. Yes, that would probably work, but it would be rather fiddly to run two Dovecot instances. I was hoping to be able to do it with just one instance. Gerry
Re: How to import an mbox to an existing user as a new mailbox
On 9 Aug 2015, at 8:46, Benny Pedersen wrote: Paul Hoffman skrev den 2015-08-09 17:40: Initializing mail storage from mail_location parameter failed: mbox: mbox root directory can't be a file Which bit am I missing here? sudo doveadm import -u Foo mbox:/home/phoffman/project1/ Project 1 all untested When I try this: Fatal: Import namespace initialization failed: Initializing mail storage from mail_location parameter failed: mkdir(/home/phoffman/project1) failed: Permission denied (euid=1013(phoffprop) egid=1013(phoffprop) missing +w perm: /home/phoffman, dir owned by 1001:1001 mode=0755) Does this error indicate that it is trying to write to the mbox file instead of reading it? If so, why? --Paul Hoffman
Re: backing up email / saving maildir on external hard drives
Dear Steve, Very valuable info. Appreciate it and will be careful when using terms. Actually I think I should just use rsync without compressing. The reason why I started compressing was because the GUI gave some errors when I was trying to copy then files. I'll just rsync the data from my laptop HDD to my external drive(without compressing) Thanks Kevin On Sunday, August 9, 2015, Steve Litt sl...@troubleshooters.com wrote: On Sat, 8 Aug 2015 10:26:55 +0530 Kevin Laurie superinterstel...@gmail.com javascript:; wrote: Hello, Yesterday I tried to back up a 40GB maildir . I tried to move the maildir from home to external HDD but failed. If you tried to *move* it it's an archive, not a backup. If you tried to *copy* it, with the intent of keeping the original on the original hard disk and using it further, and keeping today's copy on some other media, *that's* a backup. I'm not trying to be pedantic, but there are many distinctions between the two. Archives must be re-transferred frequently: Backups merely need to be redone at intervals. Decided then to compress it(which took several hours). Now changing the disk format from FAT to exFAT to allow the transfer for the large compressed file. Reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table#exFAT , I personally wouldn't use exFAT. Regular FAT32 has a max filesize of 2GB-1, which is 50 times the size of your whole uncompressed maildir. How does one back up emails on a external drive? Some advice would be greatly appreciated. Check this out: slitt@mydesq2:~$ df -h ~/mail/Maildir Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sdb8 116G 11G 100G 10% /home/slitt/mail/Maildir slitt@mydesq2:~$ I don't have 40 GB, but * have 11, which is less than an order of magnitude away. I just back up this puppy to my backup server with my normal rsync based backup procedures, which you can read about here: * http://www.troubleshooters.com/lpm/200609/200609.htm * http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/blu-ray-backup.htm * http://www.troubleshooters.com/lpm/201408/201408.htm The stuff about Blu-Ray is important only if you back up to blu-ray. I like to keep some backups on write-once media, because kept in the shade at reasonable temperatures and humidities, it tends to last longer. And spinning disks that spend the majority of their time not spinning tend to have problems. If this is a *backup*, I'd leave it uncompressed so you can take incremental backups regularly. If it's an *archive*, meaning that the data is immediately removed from your computer after copy, compression might be in order, but you should make two copies and test them both thoroughly before deleting the original, and you should test them every couple months and if either goes bad, copy the other one to something good. Archives are a PITA. For 40GB in these days of $150 2TB drives, I'd keep the data intact, back it up, and when you outgrow your hard drive, just get a bigger one. In other parts of this thread you ask how to separate backups from different accounts from different computers. As far as accounts, I think that Maildir directory structures would take care of that. As far as different machines, just put the hostname at the front of each destination directory. SteveT Steve Litt July 2015 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21
Re: How to import an mbox to an existing user as a new mailbox
Paul Hoffman skrev den 2015-08-09 20:20: Fatal: Import namespace initialization failed: Initializing mail storage from mail_location parameter failed: mkdir(/home/phoffman/project1) failed: Permission denied (euid=1013(phoffprop) egid=1013(phoffprop) missing +w perm: /home/phoffman, dir owned by 1001:1001 mode=0755) Does this error indicate that it is trying to write to the mbox file instead of reading it? If so, why? nope, you have to tell dovecot auth backend more how to write to homedir of 'id proffprop' uid and gid does not match as i read it, proffprop have uid 1001 and dovecot tryed to write to 1013 search that error and solve it
Re: backing up email / saving maildir on external hard drives
Hi Felix, I would prefer having one HDD that works with all three OSes. That would be very convenient. Guess exFAT is my best bet. Its supported on Linux,Win and OS X. What do you reckon? Best Regards Kevin On Sun, Aug 9, 2015 at 2:46 PM, Felix Zielcke fziel...@z-51.de wrote: Am Samstag, den 08.08.2015, 21:45 +0530 schrieb Kevin Laurie: Dear Christian, Thanks for your feedback. The HDD will not accept larger than 4GB (as its in FAT format). Its a new external HDD. Thinking of the best format(that would work with Mac , Win and Linux) .seems like a challenge. What's your view on NTFS? And why not exFAT? Thanks Kevin Hi Kevin, you can have multiple partitions even on an external HDD. Or do you really need one big partition which works on all 3 OS? For Win and OS X I'd use exFAT. OS X AFAIK doestn't have write support on NTFS enabled by default. And then for Linux a native FS like ext4,btrfs,XFS or whatever you personally prefer. Though the best would be indeed 3 partitions for each OS. NTFS for Windows And then HFS+ for OS X For example I use on my backup HDD NTFS for Windows and btrfs for my Linux Systems
Re: How to import an mbox to an existing user as a new mailbox
Edgar Pettijohn skrev den 2015-08-09 20:58: search that error and solve it There are prob. a lot of ways around this, but the easiest would most likely be something like: # chmod o+w /home/phoffman why use dovecot ? that will make it totaly insecure, dont do it ! i have here no access on groups and others not even on READS post dovecot -n and lets help solve it
Re: How to import an mbox to an existing user as a new mailbox
On 3 Aug 2015, at 7:16, Steffen Kaiser wrote: On Mon, 3 Aug 2015, Paul Hoffman wrote: On 2 Aug 2015, at 23:27, Steffen Kaiser wrote: On Sun, 2 Aug 2015, Paul Hoffman wrote: Greetings. I have a bunch of mbox files that I want to import to an existing user, each into a new mailbox. That is, I want to import the file project1.mbox to user Foo, into a newly-created mailbox called Project 1. Is there a dovecot tool to do this on the server? do you have access to the file system of the mail storage? Can you call doveadm on the server? What mail storage do you use now, Maildir, mbox, ... ? Sorry for being unclear earlier. Yes, yes, mbox. copy project1.mbox to '/path/to/user/mail/storage/Project 1.mbox' and make sure, the user has file system rights to access the file at all. Maybe, you need to add the new mailbox to the user's subscription file, in order to have it show up. After a week, I'm at this again. Now having read up on doveadm, I am trying the following: sudo doveadm import -u Foo mbox:/home/phoffman/project1.mbox Project 1 all However, that gets the result: Initializing mail storage from mail_location parameter failed: mbox: mbox root directory can't be a file Which bit am I missing here? --Paul Hoffman
Re: How to import an mbox to an existing user as a new mailbox
On 08/09/15 13:36, Benny Pedersen wrote: Paul Hoffman skrev den 2015-08-09 20:20: Fatal: Import namespace initialization failed: Initializing mail storage from mail_location parameter failed: mkdir(/home/phoffman/project1) failed: Permission denied (euid=1013(phoffprop) egid=1013(phoffprop) missing +w perm: /home/phoffman, dir owned by 1001:1001 mode=0755) Does this error indicate that it is trying to write to the mbox file instead of reading it? If so, why? nope, you have to tell dovecot auth backend more how to write to homedir of 'id proffprop' uid and gid does not match as i read it, proffprop have uid 1001 and dovecot tryed to write to 1013 search that error and solve it There are prob. a lot of ways around this, but the easiest would most likely be something like: # chmod o+w /home/phoffman
Re: How to import an mbox to an existing user as a new mailbox
Paul Hoffman skrev den 2015-08-09 17:40: Initializing mail storage from mail_location parameter failed: mbox: mbox root directory can't be a file Which bit am I missing here? sudo doveadm import -u Foo mbox:/home/phoffman/project1/ Project 1 all untested
Re: backing up email / saving maildir on external hard drives
On Sat, 8 Aug 2015 10:26:55 +0530 Kevin Laurie superinterstel...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, Yesterday I tried to back up a 40GB maildir . I tried to move the maildir from home to external HDD but failed. If you tried to *move* it it's an archive, not a backup. If you tried to *copy* it, with the intent of keeping the original on the original hard disk and using it further, and keeping today's copy on some other media, *that's* a backup. I'm not trying to be pedantic, but there are many distinctions between the two. Archives must be re-transferred frequently: Backups merely need to be redone at intervals. Decided then to compress it(which took several hours). Now changing the disk format from FAT to exFAT to allow the transfer for the large compressed file. Reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table#exFAT , I personally wouldn't use exFAT. Regular FAT32 has a max filesize of 2GB-1, which is 50 times the size of your whole uncompressed maildir. How does one back up emails on a external drive? Some advice would be greatly appreciated. Check this out: slitt@mydesq2:~$ df -h ~/mail/Maildir Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sdb8 116G 11G 100G 10% /home/slitt/mail/Maildir slitt@mydesq2:~$ I don't have 40 GB, but * have 11, which is less than an order of magnitude away. I just back up this puppy to my backup server with my normal rsync based backup procedures, which you can read about here: * http://www.troubleshooters.com/lpm/200609/200609.htm * http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/blu-ray-backup.htm * http://www.troubleshooters.com/lpm/201408/201408.htm The stuff about Blu-Ray is important only if you back up to blu-ray. I like to keep some backups on write-once media, because kept in the shade at reasonable temperatures and humidities, it tends to last longer. And spinning disks that spend the majority of their time not spinning tend to have problems. If this is a *backup*, I'd leave it uncompressed so you can take incremental backups regularly. If it's an *archive*, meaning that the data is immediately removed from your computer after copy, compression might be in order, but you should make two copies and test them both thoroughly before deleting the original, and you should test them every couple months and if either goes bad, copy the other one to something good. Archives are a PITA. For 40GB in these days of $150 2TB drives, I'd keep the data intact, back it up, and when you outgrow your hard drive, just get a bigger one. In other parts of this thread you ask how to separate backups from different accounts from different computers. As far as accounts, I think that Maildir directory structures would take care of that. As far as different machines, just put the hostname at the front of each destination directory. SteveT Steve Litt July 2015 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21
Re: How to import an mbox to an existing user as a new mailbox
On 08/09/15 14:13, Benny Pedersen wrote: Edgar Pettijohn skrev den 2015-08-09 20:58: search that error and solve it There are prob. a lot of ways around this, but the easiest would most likely be something like: # chmod o+w /home/phoffman why use dovecot ? that will make it totaly insecure, dont do it ! afterwards #chmod o-w /home/phoffman i have here no access on groups and others not even on READS post dovecot -n and lets help solve it
