Restore from backup

[donkeyKICK]

I was wondering if there is a way to restore email from a backup and have it simply drop in email that doesn't already exist. If I understand correctly when I restore email from backup it will delete out all existing emails and replace with emails from backup. Is that the case? If so, is there a way to instead of doing that, have it simply append them?

 

[chatwizrd]

You could just untar the backup file in some other folder and copy over the files you want manually. You should just have to copy the stuff in /home/user/imap

Just use -p flag with cp command to preserve the permissions.

 

[donkeyKICK]

So all email are in /home/user/imap?

If so, could I simply move the imap folder, do the restore, and then move it back? Would that in some way make my system angry?

What about pop?

 

[nobaloney]

I was wondering if there is a way to restore email from a backup and have it simply drop in email that doesn't already exist. If I understand correctly when I restore email from backup it will delete out all existing emails and replace with emails from backup. Is that the case? If so, is there a way to instead of doing that, have it simply append them?

I've always thought it simply copies in the emails, which may or may not overwrite existing emails with the same filename. I'm not sure, so you could certainly test.

could I simply move the imap folder, do the restore, and then move it back? Would that in some way make my system angry?

It could, becuse the indexes would be out of sync with the actual email content. So if you ever modify email manually you should delete all the index files, which will be recreated the next time a client logs in to read email.

Jeff