backup & restore, new user, lvm findings

[skiv71]

hi, i'm a new user to linux and zimbra.

i have to say zimbra is excellent and i can see why linux is such a praised OS platform.

i've just finished testing scripts and what not and would appreciate some input.

1/. i have zimbra in its own lvm. a few times, i've borked the lvremove procedure which has left me with a lvm snapshot that causes my opensuse10.2 kde not to boot. it gets stuck and i have to remove the left over snapshot manually. then it boots. why does this happen.

2/. i back up zimbra with hourly hot type and nightly cold backups.
i snap the lvm, mount t, rsync it to a folder then tar this, sending the output to my 2003 domain controller for backup. am i ok with a direct tar command with output to a lan pc? should i make the tgz then rsync, cp it over?

when i compare the rsync dir to the snap, i see i'm usually 10 files short. i'm pretty sure these are hidden files (preceeded with a .). what are these files? pretty sure when listed in terminal, there was a .bash_profile etc.

i tested a restore with both hot and cold backups and all was well. i do the restore by bringing back the required tgz file from the server, then run a script which decompresses it to a restore folder, then i rsync it to /opt/zimbra.

again the hidden files make the folder count wrong but things seem to work ok.

3/. ii noticed the default language for all my clients is english us. i need en_uk. i read somwhere the a zmprov locale etc command can sort this but i tried en_UK and it sets it to an blank selection. what is the correct command to default everyone to en_UK?

4/.in the address books, when i send a share to someone, the deafult name includes the email of the owner etc. can i make it default to the address book name only? can i make the default listing first last, instead of last, first?

5/. i'm planning on having a standy server running zimbra laying in wait. main zimbra is on *.70 and standy on *.71 both called mx1.somedomain.com

i'm assuming zimbra will be bound to the *.70 and i'll need to issue a command to change this, what would this be? i'm aware i'd also have to update the dns records and mx records on the ad controller and i would do this.

mainly i want this pc to load backups to restore emails on an imap basis.

however if main goes down i would promote it. i suppose i could just change the machines ip? (this wouldnt happem in a basic inbox restore).

thanks so much

neil