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Re: Moving mailserver from (Solaris, redhat) to Debian

I just did a mailserver migration, I was using sendmail and IMAPS
I would firstly get those 2 accounts back up the E450 like how you suggest. I would then setup the Dell box with Debian and configure ready for running a mailserver including IMAP. Althought I only had 30 mail accounts to move, the amount of data was over 30Gb, as my users don't seem to be able to find the delete key... what I did once my new mailserver was ready and the accounts were setup and I had tested IMAPS and sending (wanting to be as safe as possible) I used RSYNC to transfer all the data during the day while ppl were still using it to move the vast majority of the mail... in the evening once everyone had gone home I re-did the RSYNC to update any changes since the last RSYNC.. then turned off the original mailserver, changed the MX records.... then sat there and watch the mail logs and tested a few accounts.. once I was happy with it I went home, I came in the next day and nobody was even aware that I made the switch during the night.
One important note to make is that the IMAPS folders and locations were the same for me on both servers so rsync was a great option for me, I dont know where or how IMAP works on a E450 or if the two machine use the same paths... 

The paths on both my servers were (which made migration easy)
mail spool = /var/spool/mail
IMAP	= ~/username/Mail/*
I use uw-imap, if thats what your using on E450, why not stay with it?, as uw-imap and cyrus store information differently, I think locations and how the mail is store is different, and the user accounts are held within a cyrus database. I dont believe that simply copying the mail folders across would work... I could be really really wrong about that tho... no doubt I'll be corrected if I'm wrong.
I find uw-imap works great and as some of my users have Gb's of mail it copes really well with the load... having said that I used upgraded from a PII 600 with udma 66 to a kick ass 3Ghz 1U with dual SATA disks and 1GB ECC memory. 

	- Regards -

		Gabe


On 19 Jul 2004, at 11:10, Mauricio wrote:
Quick sendmail/mail question: we have here a E450 which is the main file and mailservers. Now, two users are getting their email off another machine, a dell redhat linux box, in the following manner:
o /etc/aliases in the E450 sends email for those two guys to user@webmail, where webmail is a CNAME for the dell. o They imap to webmail to check their email. Everybody else imaps to the E450. 
o BTW, their accounts are in the E450; only the mailbox is in the dell.
o Also, currently, the mailboxes in the E450 are in the user accounts but then symlinked to /var/spool/mail. Not my favourite way of doing things.
What I would like to do is move those two accounts back to the E450. This way, I can install debian (I do not like redneck linux and, on the top of that, it was poorly installed. Conceptually speaking, it was a good idea but implemented quite badly) in the dell and get that machine as our mailserver. Here is how I propose to do it: 

o Move the mailboxes to the E450
o Edit /etc/aliases so mail is kept in the E450 instead of forwarded to the webmail. Then, run newaliases and restart sendmail just in case... 
o Edit the CNAME webmail record to point to the E450
Should that suffice? If so, after the dell is back as debian and I have mail/spamassasin/etc running, I would 

o Stop sendmail in the E450 so we do not lose emails
o Move the mailboxes to the dell
o Change the webmail CNAME back to the dell. Probably I should just change the mail CNAME to the dell so everybody's mailclients start looking for those emails in that machine. Changing two people from checking at webmail to mail is quick. 
o Change the MX record to send mail to the dell
o See if crashes
Comments on my madness? Also, I would like to use cyrus in the debain box (we currently are using wu-imap). My main concern is that I know how to repair a mbox file as needed but do not know what to do if a maildir file gets corrupted. How often such problem happens and how easy is it to fix? 


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