The imsbackup utility is used to write selected contents of the message store to any serial device, including magnetic tape, a UNIX pipe, or a plain file. The backup or selected parts of the backup may later be recovered via the imsrestore utility. The imsbackup utility provides a basic backup facility similar to the UNIX tar command.
Location: msg_svr_base/sbin
For more information about imsbackup and backing up the message store, see the section “Backing Up and Restoring the Message Store” in the Messaging Server Administration Guide.
imsbackup -f device [-b blocking_factor] [-d datetime] [-e encoding] [-u file] [-m linkcount] [-ivlgx] [ name ...] |
The options for this command are:
Option |
Description |
---|---|
-b blocking_factor |
Everything written to the backup device is performed by blocks of the size 512xblocking_factor. The default is 20. |
-d datetime |
Date from which messages are to be backed up, expressed in yyyymmdd[:hhmmss]; for example, -d 19990501:131000 would backup messages stored from May 1, 1999 at 1:10 pm to the present. The default is to back up all the messages regardless of their dates. |
-e encoding |
Mailbox name encoding (example: IMAP_MODIFIED-UTF-7) |
-f device |
Specifies the file name or device to which the backup is written. If device is ”-’, backup data is written to stdout. |
-g |
Debug mode. The output is written in the default log file not to the stdout. For the stdout, one should use -v. |
-i |
Ignore links. Used for partial store. |
-l |
Used to autoload tape devices when end-of-tape is reached. |
-m link_count |
Specifies the minimum link count for hashing. |
-u file |
Specifies a backup object file. This file contains the object names (entire message store, user, group, mailbox, and so on) to restore. See name for a list of backup object |
-v |
Executes the command in verbose mode. |
name |
Can be 1) logical pathname of the backup object, 2) user ID, 3) message store mailbox name. Backup objects and paths:
User IDs: can be any user ID in the message store. If the user is not in the default domain, the user ID must be fully qualified (example: Wally@siroe.com). If user is in the default domain, the user ID can stand alone (example: Wally). mailbox: An email folder. It is specified using the following message store internal name: user/user_ID/folder_name. Note that user is a message store keyword. |
The following example backs up the entire message store to /dev/rmt/0:
imsbackup -f /dev/rmt/0 / |
The following backs up the mailboxes of user ID joe to /dev/rmt/0:
imsbackup -f /dev/rmt/0 /primary/user/joe |
The following example backs up all the mailboxes of all the users defined in the backup group groupA to backupfile:
imsbackup -f- /primary/groupA > backupfile |