Re: [courier-users] Moving Courier to a new host/server

[Bowie B. <Bowie_Bailey@BUC.com>]

Pawel Tecza wrote:
> On Cz, 2008-05-29 at 12:24 -0400, Bowie Bailey wrote:
> > 
> > I have moved my installation a couple of times.  It's not
> > difficult. What I did was this: 
> > 
> >     - Create a new installation of Courier on the new server
> >     - Copy over the config files from the old server
> >     - Make any config changes needed (server name, IP, etc)
> >     - Rsync maildirs from the old server (while it's still running)
> >     - Shutdown Courier on the old server
> >     - Rsync the maildirs again to pick up any last minute changes
> >     - Bring up the new server
> > 
> > The only downtime will be during the second rsync, which will not
> > take nearly as long as the first one.  Don't forget the authlib
> > config files. 
> 
> Hi Bowie,
> 
> The Maildirs of our users are available via NFS, so we don't need to
> rsync them. I think it's a good idea to use NFS or another network
> file system, if you have many users and multiple servers.

I have done that (via GFS) for another project, but it's a bit of
overkill for a low-volume mail server.

> > The only thing this doesn't get you is the contents of the outgoing
> > mailq.  I don't think there is a good way to transfer that to the
> > new server.  What I did was just let the old server run with no
> > incoming smtp or pop3 access for a day or so to let the queue clear
> > out as much as possible before I shut it down completely.
> 
> Sometimes we have to migrate our OpenVZ front-ends with Courier server
> to another physical machine. We wrote simple Bash script to fix mail
> queue file names, because the files after migration have different
> inodes and then filenames are invalid. We can share it, if you are
> interested.

Interesting idea, but...

Jérôme Blion wrote:
> 
> For mail waiting in the queue, it could be interesting to convert the
> old server to a smarthost, emptying all the queue on the new server.

I did it this way.

It has the advantage of being simple, quick and effective.  And since
everything happens through normal mail channels, I don't have to worry
about somehow screwing up the queue.

-- 
Bowie