In VPOP3 versions 3 and later, VPOP3 uses an external Database (PostgreSQL) for storing data, such as message data, logging, configuration details etc. Because of the importance of this information, it is strongly recommended that this data is backed up regularly.

By default, every day VPOP3 will backup the database to the VPOP3 installation directory as a file called 'DBBACK-x.DMP', where 'x' is the day number (0=Sunday, 1=Monday, etc). This means that the backups cycle on a weekly basis, so they don't grow indefinitely, and you always have a few backups even in case the latest one fails.

To change the automatic database backup filename, go to the VPOP3 settings, then Settings → Database → Backups.

The Dump Command Target File option tells VPOP3 where to store the backups, and what to call them. The default is DBBack-%w.dmp. You could change this to “DatabaseBackup.dmp” or whatever you prefer.

The default automatic database backup which VPOP3 performs cycles backup files on a weekly basis. This is performed by saving the backup as a file DBBack-0.dmp on Sunday, DBBack-1.dmp on Monday, etc. The following Sunday, the previous DBBack-0.dmp file is overwritten meaning you have a week's worth of backups available.

This rotation is achieved by using 'replacements' in the backup filename. In the default case, the replacement %w tells VPOP3 to replace that text with the day of week number (0-6), so each day the backup filename is different.

You could have a monthly rotation cycle, by using %d instead of %w. In this case, the backup filename would have the day of month appended, instead of the day of week.

In VPOP3 v6.1 and later, you can also set a specific rotation cycle by using %2, %3 up to %9 to set a 2, 3 to 9 day rotation, etc.

Some examples

• DBBACK.DMP - no rotation, each day's backup overwrites the previous day's backup
• DBBACK-%5.DMP - VPOP3 creates 5 backup files called DBBACK-0.DMP to DBBACK-4.DMP, overwriting the backup from 5 days ago
• DBBACK-%d-%h.DMP - VPOP3 creates backups with the day of month and hour (24hr) in the name. This can be useful if you do several backups a day and want to keep a lot of old backups
• DBBACK-%h.DMP - VPOP3 creates a backup with the hour in the name. This can be useful if you do several backups a day, but want VPOP3 to only keep backups from the last 24 hours.

If you want VPOP3 to store the database backups somewhere else, for instance, to stop filling up the installation drive, you can change this simply. Go to the VPOP3 settings, then Settings → Database → Backups.

The Dump Command Target File option tells VPOP3 where to store the backups, and what to call them. The default is DBBack-%w.dmp which tells it to store them in the VPOP3 directory, with the specified filename with the '%w' replaced by the week-day number.

If you want VPOP3 to store the backups with the same name, but in the d:\vpop3backups folder, you could set the Dump Command Target File to d:\vpop3backups\DBBack-%w.dmp

If you want the backups stored on a monthly rotation, you could use d:\vpop3backups\dbback-%d.dmp, etc

You can easily specify an external (eg USB) hard drive using the above method, simply specify the USB hard drive location as the target file.

If you want VPOP3 to store the backups across the network (eg on a NAS device), it is a bit more complicated.

Because VPOP3 is running as a service, it does not have access to mapped drives, so you cannot map the NAS to drive Z:, and tell VPOP3 to store the backups as z:\dbback-%w.dmp.

Instead of using mapped drives, you have to use UNC paths, eg \\server\share\path

Also, because VPOP3 is running as a service, it needs to have permission to access the shared folder. In VPOP3 v6.1 and later you can specify the share account details in the Database → Backup settings. In earlier versions of VPOP3 you can set VPOP3 to run as a different account which has share permissions (check ALL file permissions in that case), or you could set the sharing permissions to allow the whole VPOP3 computer access to the shares.

=keywords= managing backups