[ale] backup/restore mail from USB external drive

Wed Feb 12 12:42:48 EST 2014

If your distro supports it you should think about using ext4 vs ext3.  Much more efficient in many ways.

You don’t say what distro you’re on.

Jeffrey C. Lightner
Sr. UNIX Administrator

DS Waters of America, Inc.
5660 New Northside Drive NW
Suite 250
Atlanta, GA  30328

P: 678-486-3516
C: 678-772-0018
F: 678-460-3603
E: jlightner at water.com

From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of Brian Mathis
Sent: Wednesday, February 12, 2014 11:49 AM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
Subject: Re: [ale] backup/restore mail from USB external drive

On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 6:15 PM, John Heim <john at johnheim.com<mailto:john at johnheim.com>> wrote:

So we have a failing RAID5 array on our mail server.  I rsynced the mail to an external USB drive (formatted ext3, thanks) It looks like I am going to have to completely re-install. I want the outage to be as short as possible. I am thinking this:

1. Repeat the rsync with the system up so as to not inconvenience users.   There will be a lot of "file changed as we read it" kind of errors.
2. Shutdown the mail programs.
3. Run rsync again.  This time there shouldn't be any errors.
4. Install the new disks, reformat, re-install.
5. Copy the mail files back.

Any suggestions as to the most efficient way to do step #5? There would be no point in using rsync because the time it spends checking for changed files would be wasted.

John Heim

'rsync' is still a good option to copy files back.  It does not do a full check of files unless they already exist on the destination side, and even then it checks the date and filesize before doing a full checksum.  If you use the options, you can preserve timestamps, view progress, and easily stop/restart the copy if needed.  I'd use these options: -av --progress --partial.  When copying between local disks, it's just a version of 'cp' that gives you a lot more options.  Also, I'd recommend running this inside of a 'screen' or 'tmux' session so you can detach and leave it running, and/or protect against the session getting dropped from the network.

As far as step 5 goes, do you have enough physical space to add the new drives next to the old ones?  Then you could make a partition for the user data and stage it directly on the new drives.
Incidentally, the point of a RAID is to be able to replace failing drives without having to go through this process.  Is there any reason why you can't just replace the failing drive and rebuild the existing RAID to it?

P.S. RAID is not a backup and you should always have some kind of backup job running to external media regardless of the health of the RAID.

❧ Brian Mathis

❧ Brian Mathis

On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 6:15 PM, John Heim <john at johnheim.com<mailto:john at johnheim.com>> wrote:

So we have a failing RAID5 array on our mail server.  I rsynced the mail to an external USB drive (formatted ext3, thanks) It looks like I am going to have to completely re-install. I want the outage to be as short as possible. I am thinking this:

1. Repeat the rsync with the system up so as to not inconvenience users.   There will be a lot of "file changed as we read it" kind of errors.
2. Shutdown the mail programs.
3. Run rsync again.  This time there shouldn't be any errors.
4. Install the new disks, reformat, re-install.
5. Copy the mail files back.

Any suggestions as to the most efficient way to do step #5? There would be no point in using rsync because the time it spends checking for changed files would be wasted.

an

--
John Heim
email: john at johnheim.com<mailto:john at johnheim.com>  skype: john.g.heim

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