Jeff DeReus wrote:

I am interested in copying my entire mailman installation over to another machine to act as a mirror server in order to attempt an upgrade without the risk of breaking my current installation. Is there one certain directory path that I would have to move over in order to attempt this? or, can I install the latest mailman version and import mail list information in order to test? is one preferrable to another?

If you're only doing this to test, you don't need to do much. Assuming Mailman is quiescent with nothing in its queues, you will be interested in some or all of the following directories.

lists/ - contains the list configurations, membership, etc. and outstanding requests and held message info.

archives/private/ - contains all archives archives/public/ - contains only symlinks into archices/private/ for lists with public archives

data/ - contains current Mailman version, site password if any, list creator password if any and actual held messages. Pre 2.1.5 also held a global pending database which is per list in the lists/ directory for 2.1.5 and up. Also contains other things like the master qrunner pid that you don't want to move.

If you're not concerned about archives and the site password, you only need to move the lists/ directory and maybe mm_cfg.py. You can do this before or after the Mailman installation.

-- Mark Sapiro msapiro@value.net The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan