-----Original Message-----
>> >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.
>> 
>> I use filesystem snapshots.  Taking a snapshot is only matter of 
>> seconds.  I make a snapshot a few minutes before the amanda backup 
>> starts.  Amanda then makes a backup of that snapshot instead
>> 
>> Your OS has to support is however.  Solaris >2.8 (2.8 plain needs
>> patches) can do it.  Linux with lvm1 can do it too; Linux with lvm2 is 
>> not yet stable enough for doing snapshots.  (I have lvm2 snapshots 
>> working on one system without problems, but on other systems it makes 
>> the computer crash;  maybe related to amount of memory and/or system
>> load: the system where it does work has lots of RAM, and is very quiet 
>> in the night.)
>> 
>> Mail me for the scripts to create a snapshot if you're interested.
>
>The server in question is a fairly generic Debian/Sarge mail server
>, RAID setup for disks, 2.6 kernel.  And /var/mail is on its own
> ext3 partition.
>
>You mention that it works with LVM.  Do snapshots *require* LVM?
>
>Dave.


Generally I think the only files in a spool directory that need to be backed
up are the files that haven't been processed, for whatever reason, for
"some" time.  It doesn't matter if you miss some files because they have
been processed correctly.

There are heaps of files that move through the spool dir during the day that
never get backed up.  Only if the files happen to be in the directory at
back up time then they might be backed up.

I've seen some places that take snapshots of their spool dirs on a regular
basis (every minute and less) and these snapshots get backed up with the
nightly backup.  Even then there is a good chance you won't get all the
files.  This was more for a security audit trail than data protection.

Regards,
Greg.