Mailing List Archive

On 31/07/2023 16:55, Peter Humphrey wrote:
> On Monday, 31 July 2023 15:19:22 BST Wols Lists wrote:
>
>> The big question that needs answering is "Are you storing your emails in
>> dovecot, or in kmail?"
>
> In KMail.
>
> My server has fetchmail -> postfix -> dovecot. Fetchmail collects POP3 emails
> from my ISP and forwards it to postfix, and dovecot serves IMAP4 to my
> workstation.

So if Dovecot is serving IMAP4 to your workstation, the emails should be
in dovecot, and cached on your workstation. For my setup, they're stored
in dovecot, and cached in thunderbird ...
>
> My backup method is simple: I archive KMail's emails daily to a local disk,
> then shut the system down on a Sunday to back up the entire system to an
> external USB-3 disk.

If kmail is caching them, chances are they're stashed away in the .kmail
directory or wherever, in some standard format, and you can just back
that up.
>
> The server is taken down on a Saturday for complete system backup, to another
> USB-3 disk.
>
Perfect, they're now backed up all over the place :-)

Cheers,
Wol

On Tuesday, 1 August 2023 19:51:26 BST Wols Lists wrote:

> So if Dovecot is serving IMAP4 to your workstation, the emails should be
> in dovecot, and cached on your workstation. For my setup, they're stored
> in dovecot, and cached in thunderbird ...

Almost. KMail has a 'Download messages for offline use' option, which I've had
set until now.

> > My backup method is simple: I archive KMail's emails daily to a local
> > disk,
> > then shut the system down on a Sunday to back up the entire system to an
> > external USB-3 disk.
>
> If kmail is caching them, chances are they're stashed away in the .kmail
> directory or wherever, in some standard format, and you can just back
> that up.

Yes, I'm doing that. It now takes longer to make the backup because the emails
have to be fetched from the server.

> > The server is taken down on a Saturday for complete system backup, to
> > another USB-3 disk.
>
> Perfect, they're now backed up all over the place :-)

Quite so. :-)

--
Regards,
Peter.

On 2023-07-29, Wols Lists wrote:

> On 29/07/2023 14:54, Arsen Arsenovi? wrote:
>> Again, it shouldn't be able to do that. Please check CONFIG_PROTECT
>> using: portageq envvar CONFIG_PROTECT
>>
>> It should, normally, contain /etc, set by profiles/base/make.defaults.
>
> And here is the root of the mis-understanding between us. And also why
> Dovecot does it right, and Postfix does it wrong.
>
> WHY SHOULD I HAVE TO USE DISPATCH-CONF? (Or in my case, etc-update.)
>
> The point is I don't (have to) care whether dovecot.conf is updated or
> not. I never change it from the distro defaults, so it never offers me
> etc-update, and it never does any damage.
>
> But I DO have to care about postfix/main.cf. This makes the
> fundamental blunder of mixing distro defaults and local config in the
> SAME FILE. So yes it does offer me etc-update. But if I MISS THAT,
> I've just trashed my local config and have to rebuild it.
>
> At the end of the day, if you can't keep distro and local config
> separate, that's a fault of the upstream application. etc-update and
> dispatch-conf are gentoo's way of working round the breakage. IFF you
> use dovecot/local.conf, it's a sign of good design by the upstream
> application, and etc-update or dispatch-conf are completely
> UNNECESSARY.
>
> Cheers,
> Wol

If you have a single file both with defaults (either as settings or
commented out) and your changes, you get to see when defaults change,
and it might be easier to notice, handle and adapt if some change
requires adjusting the modified settings.

I'd say having separate files also makes it possible to miss
configuration changes.

--
Nuno Silva