Re: Mail back-up system

2006-02-09 Thread Iantcho Vassilev
That`s preatty interesting..
I read the article and the idea is good. But i would like to know what MTA
are you using..In the paper you said that at first the email is strored in
Mailbox format. Isn`t that a bottleneck. WHat are the loads of the machines.


Thanks

On 2/9/06, Olivier Nicole [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Hi,

 As a sys-admin, I am often bugged by users who had mistakenly deleted
 some very important email, and could I recover it from the tape
 back-up.

 I try to explain to them that back-up is only run once per 24 hours
 and maybe their message arrived since the last run, and that tapes are
 there to recover disk crash, not user bad moves, it still eats up
 quite some amount of my time (and it is a stupid task).

 So I came up with a system whereby messages are duplicated on a second
 server and users can use a web page to browse that second server and
 recover emails.

 Kust in case someone maybe interested, the system is explained there:

 http://www.cs.ait.ac.th/laboratory/email/mailback.shtml

 Bests,

 Olivier
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Re: Mail back-up system

2006-02-09 Thread Olivier Nicole
 I read the article and the idea is good. But i would like to know what MTA
 are you using..In the paper you said that at first the email is strored in
 Mailbox format. Isn`t that a bottleneck. WHat are the loads of the machines=

Considering we have only 200 users and 3000 messages per day, whatever
would do.

MTA is sendmail/milter.

I plan to change that mailbox thing when I get budget for a new
machine to play with (I don't want to take the risk to break the
working configuration).

Bests,

Olivier
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Re: Mail back-up system

2006-02-09 Thread Lowell Gilbert
Olivier Nicole [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

  I read the article and the idea is good. But i would like to know what MTA
  are you using..In the paper you said that at first the email is strored in
  Mailbox format. Isn`t that a bottleneck. WHat are the loads of the machines=
 
 Considering we have only 200 users and 3000 messages per day, whatever
 would do.
 
 MTA is sendmail/milter.
 
 I plan to change that mailbox thing when I get budget for a new
 machine to play with (I don't want to take the risk to break the
 working configuration).

Mailbox format might not be a bottleneck in this application.  It's
fairly efficient at appending new messages, and that is the only
common operation being performed on these backup mail spools.
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Re: Mail back-up system

2006-02-09 Thread Rafi Jacoby
 Olivier Nicole [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

  I read the article and the idea is good. But i would like to know what
 MTA
  are you using..In the paper you said that at first the email is
 strored in
  Mailbox format. Isn`t that a bottleneck. WHat are the loads of the
 machines=

 Considering we have only 200 users and 3000 messages per day, whatever
 would do.

 MTA is sendmail/milter.

 I plan to change that mailbox thing when I get budget for a new
 machine to play with (I don't want to take the risk to break the
 working configuration).

 Mailbox format might not be a bottleneck in this application.  It's
 fairly efficient at appending new messages, and that is the only
 common operation being performed on these backup mail spools.

I could see this as an advantage of the Maildirs format.

Since every mail is stored in its own file (versus concatenation in Mbox),
it's much cheaper to backup. Just copy all the new/touched files, not all
your mail.

I just have a second disk on the server that I rsync everything to on an
hourly basis.

I use Matt Simerson's excellent Mail Toaster scripts for FreeBSD, which
create a full mail server using vpopmail, courier, maildirs, spam/virus
filtering, webmail. If you are switching to Maildirs anyway, I recommend
trying it out.

http://www.tnpi.biz/internet/mail/toaster/

-Rafi

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Re: Mail back-up system

2006-02-09 Thread Lowell Gilbert
  Considering we have only 200 users and 3000 messages per day, whatever
  would do.
 
  MTA is sendmail/milter.
 
  I plan to change that mailbox thing when I get budget for a new
  machine to play with (I don't want to take the risk to break the
  working configuration).
 
  Mailbox format might not be a bottleneck in this application.  It's
  fairly efficient at appending new messages, and that is the only
  common operation being performed on these backup mail spools.
 
 I could see this as an advantage of the Maildirs format.
 
 Since every mail is stored in its own file (versus concatenation in Mbox),
 it's much cheaper to backup. Just copy all the new/touched files, not all
 your mail.

Yes, that's a good point.  Because these files are *already* backups,
I assumed that they wouldn't be backed up themselves, but that may
well not be the case.

The other approach is the one I use for a lot of automatic archives on
my own system; rotate the files on an appropriate schedule.  [Where
appropriate is an administrative call, but probably related to the
backup schedule.]

 I just have a second disk on the server that I rsync everything to on an
 hourly basis.

That doesn't solve the original poster's mail backup problem, though.
In fact, the original problem from this thread is different than any
other kind of backup issue I had considered before.
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Re: Mail back-up system

2006-02-09 Thread Olivier Nicole
 Mailbox format might not be a bottleneck in this application.  It's
 fairly efficient at appending new messages, and that is the only
 common operation being performed on these backup mail spools.

The application is using maildir (that's the normal email server that
is using mailbox).

Maildir because it is esaier to expunge oldest emails to free some
disk space and because thetape backup is cheaper when it come sto
incremental.

Olivier
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Re: Mail back-up system

2006-02-09 Thread Olivier Nicole
 I just have a second disk on the server that I rsync everything to on an
 hourly basis.

That would not solve the oops I deleted that VERY IMPORTANT email,
where I can get it back? question. My goal is not high availability,
but offering the user a way to undelete emails.

 I use Matt Simerson's excellent Mail Toaster scripts for FreeBSD, which
 create a full mail server using vpopmail, courier, maildirs, spam/virus
 filtering, webmail. If you are switching to Maildirs anyway, I recommend
 trying it out.
 
 http://www.tnpi.biz/internet/mail/toaster/

Thanks for that link, I'll keepit at hand.

Olivier
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Re: Mail back-up system

2006-02-09 Thread Olivier Nicole
  Since every mail is stored in its own file (versus concatenation in Mbox),
  it's much cheaper to backup. Just copy all the new/touched files, not all
  your mail.
 Yes, that's a good point.  Because these files are *already* backups,
 I assumed that they wouldn't be backed up themselves, but that may
 well not be the case.

Actually, as I have an Amanda server floating around, I also do tape
archive of the back-up :))

Olivier
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Re: Mail back-up system

2006-02-09 Thread Rafi Jacoby


On Feb 9, 2006, at 6:59 PM, Olivier Nicole wrote:

I just have a second disk on the server that I rsync everything to  
on an

hourly basis.


That would not solve the oops I deleted that VERY IMPORTANT email,
where I can get it back? question. My goal is not high availability,
but offering the user a way to undelete emails.


I guess if they had deleted it before the next rsync, you could just  
copy the individual mails back to the main, or have a script/trigger  
to do that.


However, in this case, it sounds like error exists between keyboard  
and chair...





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Re: Mail back-up system

2006-02-09 Thread Olivier Nicole
 I guess if they had deleted it before the next rsync, you could just  
 copy the individual mails back to the main, or have a script/trigger  
 to do that.

What if they deleted the email before it got a chance to get synched?

 However, in this case, it sounds like error exists between keyboard  
 and chair...

But that is of course the kind of problem I want to address :)

Olivier
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