Re: how to backup a cyrus server?
On Mon, 4 Dec 2006, Rafael Mahecha wrote: I recently moved all my users from proprietary wemail (using local sendmail) to latest cyrus and sendmail using lmtp. I used to use tivoli to backup the old server (which was ok since no data bases were involved)... but since cyrus has databases and such, I am concern about file-locking and database corruption. What is the best way to back up the server? shutdown cyrus for a while, then snap shot it, and then back up to tivoli or should I just be able to back up the running server directly to tivoli? what other software can I use to backup? Check out the Cyrus Wiki page at: http://cyrusimap.web.cmu.edu/twiki/bin/view/Cyrus/Backup Most people just make a regular backup of the filesystem using whatever tools they normally use. The only "trick" is to export your mailboxes.db to a flat text file in order to back it up (which you should be doing periodically anyways). It is probably not worth the downtime to actually shutdown Cyrus in order to get a consistent backup of the entire mail spool. So what if a few files change while the backup is happening? Unless you have really unreliable hardware, you'll create more downtime doing the backups than you'll ever prevent by having a consistent backup. :) Andy Cyrus Home Page: http://cyrusimap.web.cmu.edu/ Cyrus Wiki/FAQ: http://cyrusimap.web.cmu.edu/twiki List Archives/Info: http://asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus/mailing-list.html
RE: how to backup a cyrus server?
I have found a link to a process that might be helpful: http://cyrusimap.web.cmu.edu/twiki/bin/view/Cyrus/Backup Aside from this, we have done it the old fashion way: tar & zip on a live system late at night. We just had a major server failure on 10/25/2006 which we were able to recover from. Since this worked we most likely will go with this (Knock on wood), but the above is a bit more streamlined (rsync). -Bob From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Rafael Mahecha Sent: Monday, December 04, 2006 4:50 PM To: info-cyrus@lists.andrew.cmu.edu Subject: how to backup a cyrus server? I recently moved all my users from proprietary wemail (using local sendmail) to latest cyrus and sendmail using lmtp. I used to use tivoli to backup the old server (which was ok since no data bases were involved)... but since cyrus has databases and such, I am concern about file-locking and database corruption. What is the best way to back up the server? shutdown cyrus for a while, then snap shot it, and then back up to tivoli or should I just be able to back up the running server directly to tivoli? what other software can I use to backup? Thanks : Rafael Mahecha Email / Systems Administrator JSU OIM - Web Services [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.jsums.edu : Cyrus Home Page: http://cyrusimap.web.cmu.edu/ Cyrus Wiki/FAQ: http://cyrusimap.web.cmu.edu/twiki List Archives/Info: http://asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus/mailing-list.html
Re: how to backup a cyrus server?
On Dec 4, 2006, at 6:42 PM, Andrew Morgan wrote: On Mon, 4 Dec 2006, Rafael Mahecha wrote: [...] I used to use tivoli to backup the old server (which was ok since no data bases were involved)... but since cyrus has databases and such, I am concern about file-locking and database corruption. What is the best way to back up the server? shutdown cyrus for a while, then snap shot it, and then back up to tivoli or should I just be able to back up the running server directly to tivoli? what other software can I use to backup? Check out the Cyrus Wiki page at: http://cyrusimap.web.cmu.edu/twiki/bin/view/Cyrus/Backup Most people just make a regular backup of the filesystem using whatever tools they normally use. The only "trick" is to export your mailboxes.db to a flat text file in order to back it up (which you should be doing periodically anyways). [...] We're using TSM for backups. The Wiki notes using LVM snapshots so we ended up doing that. We have a pre-backup script that does the ctl_mboxlist -d for a text mailboxes file, ctl_cyrusdb -c to checkpoint, a sync, and then a lvcreate --snapshot --size 10G --name lv_cyrus_snapshot /dev/vg_cyrus/lv_cyrus. We then mount the snapshot and back it up normally with TSM. Haven't had a lot of restore experience but testing worked out OK. Cyrus Home Page: http://cyrusimap.web.cmu.edu/ Cyrus Wiki/FAQ: http://cyrusimap.web.cmu.edu/twiki List Archives/Info: http://asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus/mailing-list.html
Re: how to backup a cyrus server?
I chose that number based on scientific total lack of clue. Also, that was the nearest round number of space left over in the cyrus VG (~68G). I take it I overestimated a little :) On Dec 5, 2006, at 9:02 AM, Guus Leeuw jr. wrote: I am just wondering why in the world you are using 10G for your snapshot? This is 10G worth of snapshot bitmap + changes to the source while the snapshot is active. Hence you either have a *large* source, or a very *active* mail system...? Just my $0.02, Guus -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:info-cyrus- [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Nik Conwell Sent: 05 December 2006 12:05 To: Cyrus User's Mailing List Subject: Re: how to backup a cyrus server? ctl_mboxlist -d for a text mailboxes file, ctl_cyrusdb -c to checkpoint, a sync, and then a lvcreate --snapshot --size 10G --name lv_cyrus_snapshot /dev/vg_cyrus/lv_cyrus. We then mount the snapshot Cyrus Home Page: http://cyrusimap.web.cmu.edu/ Cyrus Wiki/FAQ: http://cyrusimap.web.cmu.edu/twiki List Archives/Info: http://asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus/mailing-list.html