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Obsolete Releases => SME 8.x Contribs => Topic started by: cyberfido on August 21, 2014, 05:42:41 PM

Title: Backup some users email and delete accounts
Post by: cyberfido on August 21, 2014, 05:42:41 PM

Hi all,
I need to free space on my SME Server and to do this I would delete some old user accounts.
However I'd like to backup somewhere the configurations and emails of these accounts before deleting them.
How could I do this letting me in the future an easy restore of the information in case someone needs access to that account?

Thanks in advance

Title: Re: Backup some users email and delete accounts
Post by: Stefano on August 21, 2014, 05:56:15 PM

just use a mail client to pull out the emails

then empty all the emails and the users' home dir..

don't delete the accounts, lock them

my 2€c

Title: Re: Backup some users email and delete accounts
Post by: cyberfido on August 21, 2014, 06:05:41 PM

Quote from: Stefano on August 21, 2014, 05:56:15 PM

just use a mail client to pull out the emails

So, you suggest me to pull emails with POP3 to free the email folders and then backup in some manner on local PC the emails downloaded?

Title: Re: Backup some users email and delete accounts
Post by: Stefano on August 21, 2014, 07:17:22 PM

pop3 or imap, it doesn't matter.. imap could be re-imported easily

hint: use Thunderbird, forget anything made by M$

Title: Re: Backup some users email and delete accounts
Post by: cyberfido on August 21, 2014, 08:02:40 PM

if I use IMAP to flush the folders how do I do?
Which folders in user folder Have I to delete? Maildir maybe and all its files and subdirectories?

P.S. I use Thunderbird since 2008. I think is much better than M$
P.P.S. It seems very strange for me to talk with an Italian in English :P

Title: Re: Backup some users email and delete accounts
Post by: guest22 on August 21, 2014, 09:45:37 PM

Create the account in Thunderbird, then go in off-line mode for all foders.

Ciao

guest

Title: Re: Backup some users email and delete accounts
Post by: janet on August 22, 2014, 03:54:19 AM

cyberfido

Quote

How could I do this letting me in the future an easy restore of the information in case someone needs access to that account?

Archive the user home folders with tar, save them to USB attached to the server.
Then delete all those messages & other data files in the users home folder, off the server using mc or command line
Remember that backup is your ONLY copy of those messages & if it fails in the future you will not be able to restore anything, so make a second copy on a seperate disk for redundancy purposes.

Then lock the user accounts.

You can easily restore those messages & files directly to the server (in the correct format for the sme server mail server etc) if needed in future.

Something like this should do

cd /home/e-smith/files/users
mount the USB drive
tar -czvf /media/USBmount/username1.tar.gz username1
tar -czvf /media/USBmount/username2.tar.gz username2
tar -czvf /media/USBmount/username3.tar.gz username3
and so on...

See here for concepts
http://wiki.contribs.org/Backup_server_config#Copying_data_to_the_restored_server

Title: Re: Backup some users email and delete accounts
Post by: cyberfido on August 28, 2014, 10:32:38 AM

Thanks to all for the replies.
This forum is very precious.

Title: Re: Backup some users email and delete accounts
Post by: Stefano on August 28, 2014, 11:12:36 AM

Quote from: cyberfido on August 21, 2014, 08:02:40 PM

P.P.S. It seems very strange for me to talk with an Italian in English :P

then come to italian language forum too ;-)