Squirrelmail Backup and Restore Tutorial?

[lingpanda]

So I followed this tutorial with success some time back. http://www.howtoforge.com/perfect-se...ot-ispconfig-3 How do I create a backup of squirrelmail data and restore? The only info I have been able to find is posted here http://www.howtoforge.com/forums/showthread.php?t=61116 Is it really that simple to back up all data? Thanks for any and all assistance.

[SeijiSensei]

The really important data are the mailboxes. Usually the inboxes are in /var/mail and any personal folders in the users' home directories. SquirrelMail itself resides in /usr/share/squirrelmail. Only the config directory is unique to your site.

[lingpanda]

The really important data are the mailboxes. Usually the inboxes are in /var/mail and any personal folders in the users' home directories. SquirrelMail itself resides in /usr/share/squirrelmail. Only the config directory is unique to your site.

So I located the mail in /var/vmail/mydomain.com. I do not see any user home directories however. I do see additional data here /var/lib/squirrelmail/data/tuser@mydomain.com.abook and /var/lib/squirrelmail/data/tuser@mydomain.com.pref. Does this seem correct? Thanks.

[SeijiSensei]

Those files are the address books and preferences for each user that SquirrelMail maintains. They don't contain any messages.

The mail itself might be delivered to the users' home directories. Implementations vary depending on the type of delivery system you use, for instance, whether the mail is stored in mbox or Maildir folders. Take a look at /home/username and see if a mail or Maildir exists.

[lingpanda]

Those files are the address books and preferences for each user that SquirrelMail maintains. They don't contain any messages.

The mail itself might be delivered to the users' home directories. Implementations vary depending on the type of delivery system you use, for instance, whether the mail is stored in mbox or Maildir folders. Take a look at /home/username and see if a mail or Maildir exists.

No luck in the home directories but I do see mail folders in

/var/vmail/mydomain.com/tuser/Maildir/.Test Folder/maildirfolder

This must be it?

[nerdtron]

Look inside that folder or look for Maildir/ folder. Also, dig in deeper until you see some files named like this 1338794060.17775.mail.mydomain.net,S=1767:2,
That is an actual email filename of a user. You can even view it in the text editor and see the contents. This way, you'll be sure that you are going to copy the correct mail folder.

[lingpanda]

Look inside that folder or look for Maildir/ folder. Also, dig in deeper until you see some files named like this 1338794060.17775.mail.mydomain.net,S=1767:2,
That is an actual email filename of a user. You can even view it in the text editor and see the contents. This way, you'll be sure that you are going to copy the correct mail folder.

Thank you nerdtron and Seiji. I found data here:

/var/vmail/mydomain.com/tuser/Maildir/cur#

Will a simple copy of all folders/subfolders be enough to restore?

cp -r /var/vmail/mydomain.com/

or this?

cp -r -p /var/vmail/mydomain.com/

[nerdtron]

cp command?
Is the backup drive and the destination drive on the same computer?

Also, remember the syntax

cp -r -p [source] [destination]

You may not need the -p option if the folder is already created but it's good to have.

In my case, as with recent my migration (from Squirrelmail to iRedMail Roundcube) it's better to use the rsync command. It works even on separate computers on the network (one is the old mail, and the other is the mail server).

BUT if you are just doing a one time backup and restore, it would be a lot better if you use a zip (or tar) the whole folder. This way, you just unzip the file when you want to restore the emails. The advantage of this it that it preserves file ownership and permissions and saves a lot of hard drive space. I strongly suggest this way since permission on email files are important.

[lingpanda]

nerdtron I'm going to be using rsync but wasn't sure how to express the command options with it. What's your rsync command?

[nerdtron]

This commmand is issued on the receiving server. Meaning, the copied files will come from remote server.

rsync -avrh --progress  --delete-excluded --delete  root@192.x.x.x:/remote/mail/path/to/Maildirs /local/destination/path/Maildir/

-avrh - a means to copy attributes, permissions and ownerships, v for verbose to see what is currently copying, r for recursive to copy the inner diretories, and h for human readable format (the file sizes)

--progress - to show the progress of the whole process

--delete-excluded and --delete - I used this since I used rsync a lot of times, and the data from the sender changes, some are deleted so I added this to delete the non-existent files from the sender but the were present on the receiver.

root@192.x.x.x:/path/ - the sender (or rather the SOURCE location), or the old email server and the path to the location you want to copy.

/local/destination/ - the path on the receiving machine (the DESTINATION) where the copied files will be located.

You're rsync command may vary, but this will do the trick if you want to copy from one server to another. If you will run rsync just once, do not include --delete-excluded and --delete in the command.
You can also check the manual for rsync (I read it carefully and tested some commands before doing the real copy).

man rsync

Keep us updated on your progress.