[clug] backing up a live mailserver

Michael Still mikal at stillhq.com
Fri Mar 11 10:37:56 GMT 2005


Tony and Robyn Lewis wrote:
> We're running Dovecot IMAP on our mailserver, and we want to add a 
> backup mailsever.  We'll have it as a secondary MX record, for when the 
> primary goes down.
> 
> At the moment, it's a mental exercise, but the difficult part is that we 
> want to keep the entire mailboxes synchronised, not just buffer incoming 
> mail on the secondary.  I'm thinking of using Unison to help keep them 
> in sync.  Done right (I hyphothesise) it should take care of 
> sycnhronising when the primary goes down, and when it comes back up.

I know nothing about unison, but do something similar on a smaller scale 
(laptop imap server syncs with home imap server via an encrypted tunnel, 
and then I read mail on the laptop) using offlineimap. It only handles 
one user at a time, but that's nothing that a little hacking couldn't 
fix I imagine...

Mikal

-- 

Michael Still (mikal at stillhq.com) | "The geek shall inherit
http://www.stillhq.com            |  the earth"
UTC + 11                          |    -- The Simpsons

Linux.conf.au 2005 -- Quite like an excellent Linux and Open Source
conference. http://lca2005.linux.org.au


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