Backup Service¶

The backup service handles automated backups of the Mailyte mail server -- MySQL database dumps, mail storage snapshots, and configuration files. It runs on a schedule and stores backups locally or pushes them to the cloud sync service.

What It Does¶

• MySQL dumps: Full and incremental database backups
• Mail storage snapshots: Compressed archives of /var/mail/vhosts/
• Configuration backups: Postfix, Dovecot, Rspamd configs
• Scheduled execution: Configurable cron-like scheduling
• Retention management: Auto-delete old backups based on retention policy
• Webhook notifications: Alerts on backup success/failure
• Restore support: Scripts to restore from any backup point

How It Works¶

flowchart LR
    subgraph Backup["Backup Service"]
        Scheduler["Scheduler"]
        MySQLDump["MySQL\nDumper"]
        FileDump["File\nArchiver"]
        Cleaner["Retention\nCleaner"]
    end

    Scheduler --> MySQLDump
    Scheduler --> FileDump
    Scheduler --> Cleaner

    MySQLDump -->|"mysqldump"| MySQL[(MySQL)]
    MySQLDump --> BackupVol["/backups/"]
    FileDump -->|"tar + gzip"| MailDir["/var/mail/vhosts/"]
    FileDump --> BackupVol

    BackupVol --> CloudSync["Cloud Sync\n(optional)"]
    Cleaner --> BackupVol

Backup Types¶

MySQL Database¶

Full mysqldump with:

• All tables (schema + data)
• Triggers and stored procedures
• Consistent snapshot using --single-transaction

Output: /backups/mysql/mailserver_YYYY-MM-DD_HH-MM-SS.sql.gz

Mail Storage¶

Compressed tar archive of the Maildir tree:

Output: /backups/mail/vhosts_YYYY-MM-DD_HH-MM-SS.tar.gz

For large deployments, incremental backups using rsync --link-dest are more efficient.

Configuration¶

Archive of all service configs:

Output: /backups/config/config_YYYY-MM-DD_HH-MM-SS.tar.gz

Scheduling¶

Retention Policy¶

Restore Procedures¶

Restore MySQL¶

# Decompress and pipe into MySQL
gunzip < /backups/mysql/mailserver_2025-01-15_02-00-00.sql.gz | \
  mysql -h mysql -u root -p mailserver

Restore Mail Storage¶

# Stop Dovecot first to prevent file conflicts
docker stop dovecot

# Extract to mail storage
tar -xzf /backups/mail/vhosts_2025-01-12_03-00-00.tar.gz -C /var/mail/

# Fix permissions
chown -R 5000:5000 /var/mail/vhosts/

# Restart Dovecot
docker start dovecot

Configuration¶

Docker Configuration¶

backup:
  build: ./storage/backup
  container_name: backup
  volumes:
    - backup_data:/backups
    - mail_data:/var/mail/vhosts:ro
    - ./config:/app/config:ro
  depends_on:
    - mysql

Gotchas¶