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On Monday, 22.08.2005 at 22:53 -0400, Jason 'XenoPhage' Frisvold wrote:

> [ ... some are new mail messages coming in ... ]

I've often wondered about this.  I back up the mail spools in /var/mail
of the appropriate server and occasionally get a 'STRANGE' from it
because one of the spools changes during the course of the backup job.

What is considered the Correct Way to handle backing up files which are
so dynamic?  Our mail spools are pretty quiet at the time the backup
runs, but some of you out there must have more traffic than us ...

My thoughts:

1. Just put up with it: spools that are changing will result in a backup
which is probably not of any use once in a while.  This is probably
fine, unless there is a large amount of mail coming in at the time the
backup runs;

2. Make a policy decision not to backup mail spools at all.  There are
often reasons for making such a policy, although it's not something that
we do;

3. Copy in a robust fashion from the mail spools to a temporary location
prior to the backup job, so that these copies of the spools will not
change; then backup the copies rather than the 'live' spools.  The
"robust fashion" would work in a similar way to how locking mail spools
operates when appending/deleting messages.

If option #3, has anyone actually done that?  How?

Dave.
- -- 
Dave Ewart
davee AT ceu.ox.ac DOT uk
Computing Manager, Cancer Epidemiology Unit
Cancer Research UK / Oxford University
PGP: CC70 1883 BD92 E665 B840 118B 6E94 2CFD 694D E370
N 51.7518, W 1.2016
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