• Recovery

Benno MailArchiv stores its data under different paths.

• Repository: /srv/benno/archive/repo
• Index: /srv/benno/archive/index
• Import-Spool /srv/benno/inbox
• User database: /var/lib/benno-web
• Templates für HTML-UI: /srv/benno/bennoweb''

The emails are stored in compressed form in the repository. The repository occupies by far the largest space in the archive's file system. No emails are deleted from the repository, so a backup only needs to save the files that have been added since the last backup.

A simple incremental network backup using system tools is a good option here.

A simple incremental backup to a locally mounted network share can be implemented with a simple script.

#!/bin/sh
#
#
BACKUPDIR=/backup/benno-mailarchiv
 
ARCHIVE_DIR=/srv/benno
TS_FILE=$ARCHIVE_DIR/.last_backup
 
START_DATE=`date +%Y%m%d%H%M.%S`
 
if [ ! -f $TS_FILE ];then
    touch -t 200001010000 $TS_FILE
fi
 
/usr/bin/find $ARCHIVE_DIR -depth -newer $TS_FILE -print |\
    tar -T - -cf ${BACKUPDIR}/benno-backup_$(date +%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S).tar 
touch -t $START_DATE $TS_FILE

#!/bin/sh
#
#
BACKUPDIR=/mnt/backup/$hostname
 
ARCHIVE_DIR=/srv/benno
TS_FILE=$ARCHIVE_DIR/.last_backup
 
START_DATE=`date +%Y%m%d%H%M.%S`
 
if [ ! -f $TS_FILE ];then
    touch -t 200001010000 $TS_FILE
fi
 
/usr/bin/find $ARCHIVE_DIR -depth -newer $TS_FILE -print |\
    /bin/cpio --pass-through --preserve-modification-time --make-directories \
    $BACKUPDIR
touch -t $START_DATE $TS_FILE

The backup machine starts a script on the machine to be backed up via SSH, which creates a cpio archive from all newer files (benno2-create_cpio). This is then piped via SSH to the backup host and further processed there by another script.

# Backup Benno Mailarchive from remote host # # Benno Backup 20 1 * * * root ssh benno.lw-systems.net '/usr/local/sbin/benno2-create_cpio' | sh /usr/local/sbin/benno2-extract_cpio

This script is copied to the directory “/usr/local/sbin” on the backup machine.

#!/bin/sh # # cd /rsnapshot/benno-backups /bin/cpio -i \ --make-directories \ --no-absolute-filenames \ --preserve-modification-time

On the machine to be backed up, the script to generate the CPIO data stream is created in "/usr/local/sbin".

#!/bin/sh # # ARCHIVE_DIR=/srv/benno TS_FILE=$ARCHIVE_DIR/.last_backup START_DATE=`date +%Y%m%d%H%M.%S` /usr/bin/find $ARCHIVE_DIR -newer $TS_FILE | \ /bin/cpio -o touch -t $START_DATE $TS_FILE

Attention: The file .last_backup must be created for initialization.

touch -t 200001010000 /srv/benno/.last_backup

The index data of the indexed emails is stored in the index directory.

The index files are only written during the commit process. The index is committed no later than 10 seconds after the last email is written to it.

A backup can therefore be performed based on a hard link snapshot.

/etc/init.d/benno-archive stop sleep 10 cp -al /srv/benno/index /srv/benno/index_backup /etc/init.d/benno-archive start

The directory /srv/benno/index_backup can now be backed up safely.

A file backup can easily be performed here.