[TriLUG] Backing up mail and MySql

[Chander Ganesan]

The converstion from mbox to maildir (the files themselves) is pretty 
easy, it's as simple as running a perl script: 
.http://batleth.sapienti-sat.org/projects/mb2md/

You'll need to set up procmail to deliver using maildir format (assuming 
that sendmail is using procmail as its mda).  I don't use procmail for 
delivery...only for sorting/filtering so I can't offer much advice on 
that...it does support maildir though.

UWIMAP doesn't support maildir (to the best of my knowledge).  Id' 
switch to something like BincIMAP, which has excellent support for 
Maildir, and will allow you to use checkpassword type authentication 
(you may need to install checkpassword though for this). 

For the conversion check out the link above, it will convert the 
mailboxes to the new format, and also take care of removing the pesky 
placeholder message at the top of each mailbox.

Chander Ganesan
Microhard Technical Institute, NC


Rick DeNatale wrote:

>Now that I've got a reasonable amount of storage for backup, I'm
>thinking about how to actually implement it.
>
>I figure that I'll use the rsync backup method which Jeremy presented.
>
>But I have two sets of data which I think will need special processing.
>
>1) Mail - Right now my mail spools are in mailbox format. I'm thinking
>that I should consider conversion to another format such as maildir.
>What's involved in such a conversion? Which mail chain programs are
>sensitive to the mailbox format and need to be reconfigured. Heres
>what I'm using now:
>   procmail - I think this needs re-configuring
>   fetchmail - I think that it doesn't care it goes through procmail
>   sendmail - ?
>   uwimap/pop daemon - ?
>
>Does anyone know of a cookbook or how-to on doing a mailbox to maildir
>conversion?
>
>2) MySql - I've got a few web apps which are using MySql databases.
>Everythings in MyIsam format. I figure that I'll periocally back these
>up to a directory using something like the mysqlhotcopy script, and
>then let rsbackup take incremental backups from there.
>
>Any comments or advice?
>  
>