Re: [Nolug] qmail backup strategy

John Hebert <johnahebert@yahoo.com> writes:

> --- "Mark A. Hershberger" <mah@everybody.org> wrote:
>> John Hebert <johnahebert@yahoo.com> writes:
>>
>> > chmod 600 (rw only by owner)
>> /path/to/email/dirs/john
>>
>> If you are using qmail, you are probably using maildir format. In
>> that case, don't do this as it will make the directory un-usable by
>> everyone.
>
> Isn't that what you would want?

Everyone, including the owner, would not be able to use the directory.
I would assume that the owner would want to read his mail.

> The best course of action would be to check out the ownership and
> permissions on the email directories (/home/user/Maildir, or where
> ever) and duplicate those on the new server. My example was
> incorrect in that it probably won't match the original permissions
> of the Maildir, but it was an off the cuff example. I didn't make
> that clear.

If you use tar, the original permissions will be restored, so you
shouldn't have to worry about restoring permissions.

> Checking the perms on my /home/john/Maildir, I have
> rwx for the owner only, which means that only I (and
> root of course) can get into it.

rwx for owner only would be 0700, not 0600 as you originally said.

Try it out: give a directory permissions of 0600:

,----
| $ mkdir test-dir
| $ chmod 600 test-dir
| $ ls -l test-dir
| total 0
| $
`----

All looks fine so far. But wait:

,----
| $ touch test-dir/t
| /usr/bin/touch: cannot touch `test-dir/t': Permission denied
| $ sudo touch test-dir/t
| $ sudo ls -l test-dir/t
| -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 2004-04-20 11:05 test-dir/t
| $ ls -l test-dir
| ls: test-dir/t: Permission denied
| total 0
| $
`----

That execute bit is pretty important for directories.

-- 
A choice between one man and a shovel, or a dozen men with teaspoons
is clear to me, and I'm sure it is clear to you also.
    -- Zimran Ahmed <http://www.winterspeak.com/>
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