I've worked with your exact setup before nearly. The best thing you can do is..
1) Do nothing on your old vpopmail machine yet. 2) Install vpopmail on your new machine 3) DO-NOT create your domains or anything on your new machine yet. 4) Use Rsync through SSH to copy your vpopmail directory from your old server to your new one. I know the exact command if you want it. should be /home/vpopmail 5) Create your domains on your new machine, you'll get a warning "Domain already exists" however it will create anyways and all of your users will be automatically created, and your domains will get the correct UID and GID's. 6) When you're sure it'll work for you (which I'm 99.9% positive it will), simply use rsync to recopy your old vpopmail directory to your new one on the new server. RSync will only copy the new files, so it doesn't recopy anything, therefore you don't have any missed e-mails. 7) Repoint your DNS and you have a complete transfer. on your old machine, do this.. rsync -av -e ssh /home/vpopmail 0.0.0.0:/home Replace the 0's with the destination IP address, it'll prompt you for the new servers root password, enter it in and it'll build file list and transfer everything over. You may get some warnings and/or errors from rsync saying "Some files could not be transfered" that's because some files your trying to transfer are currently being used, etc. To stop that, simply cutoff the connections and then transfer (possible right before you transfer everything to make the new server active) If you have any questions, let me know. - Austin Jorden On Sun, August 13, 2006 8:35 pm, Kurt Bigler wrote: > I'm migrating my vpopmail server to a new machine. The DNS zones > fortunately do not have to be moved. > > My tentative plan for how to achieve the transition is as follows. > > (1) set up the new server with identical vpopmail domain/user structure > (2) have the new server ready to receive SMTP for these domains, but with > no > MX pointing to it yet > (3) set up the old server to route ALL outgoing SMTP through the new > server > > At that point everything is basically set up for a transition, but nothing > has really changed yet except how outgoing SMTP is being routed. > > (4) On the old server, delete all domains currently delivered locally > there, > but still accept incoming messages for those domains. (Also retain > maildirs > and contents for later copying. So I can't just vdeldomain.) The idea is > that incoming messages still go through the old server, but as soon as the > local domains are gone they get passed on to the new server with all other > outgoing SMTP. > (5) Copy all residual POP directory contents left on the old server to the > new server. > > (6) Re-point the MX to the new server. Actually this is probably just an > A > record change since the MX hostname will remain the same. > (7) Update all other relevant A records that end-users have entered into > their MUA configurations. > > > I'm not sure of a couple things in the above plan. > > > (a) Basically how do I achieve step (4) above? Do I manually empty the > assign file and/or virtualdomains files since I need to retain the POP > directories and so can't use vdeldomain? > > (b) On the new server, is there any advantage (or necessity) to accepting > delivery for the domains but deferring the actual local delivery until the > old POP contents are copied over first? > > > Thanks for any thoughts. > > -Kurt Bigler > > > >
