SXMBOXEXP Excludes Folders

[RSisco]

I run a backup script that includes the following line:

nice -n 19 /opt/scalix/bin/sxmboxexp -p -a /home/smbshares/backups/mailboxes/public_folders.mbox --listlevel folder -F

When I look at the output of the backup, it has excluded several folders for no apparent reason.

I don't even know where to start to figure out why this is happening.

Richard

[ltward]

Hi Richard,

Is it always the same folders that get excluded?
Do you see anything in common with the excluded folders?
- are they sub-folders?
- do they have an owner in common?
- do they have special permissions?

Does sxmboxlist show the excluded folders?

I'd look at things like that in an attempt to figure out what might be causing the exclusion.

[RSisco]

Sorry for the delay, I somehow missed your reply to my question.

Is it always the same folders that get excluded?

No. This all started because our "Projects" folder has an "Archived" folder that has grown quite large, making our nightly backups a little unmanageable. To combat this, I added a script or two to the nightly backup that first did a complete sxmboxlist of the public folders and then eliminated anything with "Archived" in the name, spitting the remaining folder names out to a txt file that was then used in conjunction with my previously noted command to backup only non-archived folders. I then duplicated the backup script to create a monthly backup that would include the archived folders in the backup. This seemed to work great, until I noticed that the monthly backup was not as big as it should have been. The odd thing is, the monthly backup script is exactly the same as the nightly script had been for years, but doesn't produce the same results. It was after this that I noticed that my nightly backup script was excluding folders as well.

Naturally, I took the approach of going back to square one. I replaced my altered backup scripts with backups of the originals, so everything would be as it was before alterations. However, the problem continued. Argh.

Do you see anything in common with the excluded folders?
- are they sub-folders?

Both subfolders and parent folders are excluded.

- do they have an owner in common?

As far as I can tell, everything is owned by "+ScalixAdmins".

- do they have special permissions?

Not that I see. I don't know what may be considered "special".

Does sxmboxlist show the excluded folders?

Yes. When I check the txt file(s) created by my altered scripts, they contain everything they should. So even when providing the sxmboxexp command with a specific list of folders to export, it still excludes them.

The log from the backup shows a list of several folders being included with the last line "interrupted" like so: "F-000327118Done with mailbox backup!". However, when I do an sxmboxlist of the backup mbox file, it takes a good while before listing any folders, and then only lists one (which happens to be a subfolder). Soooooo....can I maybe assume a timeout is occurring, causing the backup to stop abruptly and ultimately corrupt the output mbox file, resulting in the truncated folder listing? To further muck things up, the one folder that is listed as being in the mbox file is NOT included in the list produced by the log. WTF?

Thanks for your help.

Richard

[RSisco]

Just to put things into perspective, when the backup was running correctly, it was approx 14GB, now it's more like 2GB. That's a lot of skipped items.

Richard