postix, cyrus imap and online backup

[ankush grover]

On 10/3/06, Boris Glawe <boris at boris-glawe.de> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> we're using postfix and cyrus imap on the same machine for internal
> mail. Mail delivered by smtp to the machine is locally forwarded to the
> imap server.
>
> Currently all mail is handled by a domain provider. We fetch our
> (external) mails via POP3 from the provider's server.
>
>
> We'd like to extend the usage of this mailsystem in a way, that it will
> 1.) send all external mail,
> 2.) receive all external mail
> *and*
> 3.) do an online backup of all mails that have been transferred.
>
>
> 1.) is easy to solve.

Postfix is easy to configure as compared to other avaliable MTAs


> 2.) What's the best solution here?
>     - we could forward mails from our domain provider to our
>       postfix machine. What happens if that machine isn't online
>       for a few days? Is there a solution that the mail is
>       regularly being fetched (every 5 minutes) from the
>       provider's server?
>     - what else do you suggest?

You can use fetchmail to download the mails from the Service Provider
in this case even your machine is not online for few days your mails
will not be lost.


> 3.) The backup can of course be done by syncing the imapd's directory
> regularly to another machine. Problem is that the backuped data
> structure is an cyrus specific data stucture that can hardly be used to
> restore lost mails. We'd like to have a solution that makes it easy to
> restore lost mails and - if possible - is an online backup solution.
> That means each mail the is delivered or received will automatically be
> backuped while it's being handled.
>

There is an option in postfix (always_bcc)  through which every mail
going out and coming in is saved. Please read more about "always_bcc".


Regards

Ankush Grover