The UCS mail system is based on the mailserver Cyrus. This article describes how to create a full backup of all relevant data concerning the Cyrus mailserver and how to copy the data to a second mail server, e.g. a failover server, or if the mailserver suffered from a hardware defect. For copying the files, the command line tool rsync is used.
Because the Cyrus mailserver saves its files only in irregular intervals a backup of all files is not possible while the mailserver daemon is running. The described procedure in this article aims for the shortest possible downtime.
This backup will run twice. The first time all noncritical files are copied and in a second run, with a stopped Cyrus mailserver, to copy the latest written data. This article describes how to perfom these steps.
Preparations
For creating the backup, a separate folder on a device with enough free storage space is required. In this article, the folder /opt/cyrus-backup on the mailserver is used. After the backup is completed, the content can be copied to another server or a removable device.
If a failover mailserver is to be created, a second UCS system must be installed with the mailserver component installed. To ensure the backed-up files are used correctly in the failover server, make sure the same package versions are installed before copying the files to the new server.
All commands in this article are assumed to be run as user root.
First rsync-call
In the first run all Cyrus files, including the mail spool directory, are saved. The folders, that must be copied, can be found in the /etc/imapd/imapd.conf file. The two directories are stored as the variables configdirectory and partition-default:
configdirectory: /var/lib/cyrus
partition-default: /var/spool/cyrus/mail
To save the backup to the local directory, run the following command:
rsync -vaR --delete --delete-after /var/lib/cyrus /var/spool/cyrus/mail /opt/backup-cyrus
rsync is also used to save the backup to the failover server. During the copy process, rsync requests the password of the user who copies the files on the remote server. It is adviced to create a SSH key-pair if the backup should run automatically. To copy files to the failover server, rsync must be called twice:
rsync -va --delete --delete-after /var/lib/cyrus/ user@failoverserver:/var/lib/cyrus/
rsync -va --delete --delete-after /var/spool/cyrus/ user@failoverserver:/var/spool/cyrus/
Backup of mailboxes.db
When creating the backup, the file mailboxes.db should be saved separately. This file’s content can be recreated by Cyrus, but all information on read mails or marked mails would be lost. If this file is damaged, its content is irrevocably lost. The following command converts the file into a plaintext file:
su - cyrus -c "/usr/sbin/ctl_mboxlist -d" /var/lib/cyrus/mailboxlist.txt
Reloading this file is only needed, when there is a difference in the Cyrus version between the primary mailserver and the restored server. The file is saved in /var/lib/cyrus and will be saved automatically during the second rsync-call.
To restore the file mailboxes.txt (if needed) at a later time, e.g. after restoring the backup, the following command is used:
su - cyrus -c "/usr/sbin/ctl_mboxlist -u /var/lib/cyrus/mailboxlist.txt"
Second rsync-call
Because the just copied files can contain inconsistent data, a second run must be performed, but this time the cyrus mailserver must be stopped:
invoke-rc.d cyrus-imapd stop
Now the files must be backed up again. rsync will only copy those files that have changed since the last time they were copied. To save the backup to the local directory, run the following command:
rsync -vaR --delete --delete-after /var/lib/cyrus /var/spool/cyrus/mail /opt/backup-cyrus
When the files are copied, the mailserver can be started again:
invoke-rc.d cyrus-imapd start
Attention: When copying the data to the failover server, the mailserver daemon should be stopped on both systems to prevent damaging the data.
Restoring the backup
When restoring the data, the same steps are required as during the preparation of the failover server. It is assumed that the backup still resides in /opt/cyrus-backup.
First, the mailserver daemon must be stopped:
invoke-rc.d cyrus-imapd stop
To copy the backup back, the following commands must be executed:
rsync -va --delete --delete-after /opt/backup-cyrus/var/lib/cyrus/ /var/lib/cyrus/
rsync -va --delete --delete-after /opt/backup-cyrus/var/spool/cyrus/mail/ /var/spool/cyrus/mail
After the files are copied, the mailserver daemon must be started again:
invoke-rc.d cyrus-imapd start
Starting the failover server
Because the mail specific UCR variables were already copied to the failover server during its creation, the Cyrus daemon must only be started:
invoke-rc.d cyrus-imapd start