omsuspend and rsync - can't suspend for long enough.

[netpenthe]

From what I understand the rsync method of backups is preferred for fc4.

Just wondering if there is a way to suspend the server for longer.

As i understannd omsuspend can only work for 299 seconds but our rsync takes 16 minutes! (and thats for only 37Gigs used, we have 650Gig of disk!).

>Paused Production server at: Fri Sep 1 02:02:36 CST 2006
>Starting rsync at: Fri Sep 1 02:02:36 CST 2006
>Finished rsync at: Fri Sep 1 02:18:39 CST 2006
>Un-pausing Production server at: Fri Sep 1 02:18:39 CST 2006

Any suggestions on this?

Is it that bad to rsync a running server (without omsuspend?), i presume a few things might be out of whack, but will 99.9% of it be ok?

Cheers

Jon

[Valerion]

Your mailstore may have a little corruption, especially in-transit messages, or mailboxes changed while the rsync was running. An omscan will fix this, but you will lose some stuff, and Scalix doesn't support this.

Why don't you create a LVM setup instead? You can then suspend, create a snapshot and unsuspend, then rsync the snapshot off, and remove it when it's done.

[netpenthe]

from what i understood, fc4 does not do lvm snapshots correctly? ??

or does it work now?

cheers

jon

[btisdall]

There was an issue that was configuration-dependant - I've never had problems on FC4 but others weren't so lucky. Looking at the bug report I get the impression it's fixed, though it isn't closed.

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/sh ... ?id=132057

Hopefully you can try it somewhere in a non-critical environment as if you are one of the unfortunate ones the outcome isn't too pleasant.

BTW, FC-4 doesn't load the dm_snapshot module automtically which caused me no end of puzzlement. You need to put a line to load it into your rc.local script or drop an appropriately named script into /etc/sysconfig/modules. Unless this has been fixed by now & I didn't notice...

[dkelly]

To add the "Scalix" word to this thread...

The rsync method is part of the preferred solution. The condensed recommendation for backups is:

1. /var/opt/scalix mounted on a LVM partition
2. omsuspend
3. Create LVM snapshot
4. mount the snapshot on another mount point
5. un-omsuspend ( if there is such a word )
6. rsync from the mounted snapshot
7. Destroy the snapshot.

So, the omsuspend is only required for the length of time it takes to create the snapshot not for the whole rsync.

Cheers

Dave