Migration to new server
Currently, a client of mine has a mailman list running since 2006 on a server with a company they no longer do business with. We're wanting to consolidate resources for their organization and migrate them to a cPanel web host that supports mailman.
Is there any concern about mailman versions between servers or anything else I might not be thinking of? What's the best way to go about moving them to another server supporting mailman?
I can say with fair certainty that we don't have root access to the old server, so I'm not sure what needs to be planned for during a migration between service providers. Thanks.
Regards, Will Ashworth
On 6/16/2011 11:35 AM, William Ashworth wrote:
Currently, a client of mine has a mailman list running since 2006 on a server with a company they no longer do business with. We're wanting to consolidate resources for their organization and migrate them to a cPanel web host that supports mailman.
Is there any concern about mailman versions between servers or anything else I might not be thinking of? What's the best way to go about moving them to another server supporting mailman?
I can say with fair certainty that we don't have root access to the old server, so I'm not sure what needs to be planned for during a migration between service providers. Thanks.
Regards, Will Ashworth
Hi Will:
We are a cpanel host that specializes in Mailman hosting. We have clients all the time migrating to our services from various different servers and versions and to date we have had no problems in moving them. All we ask for is the mbox file that governs their archives and the list configuration files that make up their list.
In case you haven't made a firm decision, I recommend checking us out at http://www.mailmanhost.com. When choosing any cpanel host that supports mailman, make sure that they are actually willing to support mailman AND that they are not throttling their smtp servers. A lot of cpanel hosts will limit how much email an account can send out per hour and that can cripple an active mailman list. Just some thoughts.
-- Brian Carpenter Owner | EMWD& dotList brian@emwd.com | http://www.emwd.com | http://www.mailmanhost.com
On 6/16/2011 8:35 AM, William Ashworth wrote:
Currently, a client of mine has a mailman list running since 2006 on a server with a company they no longer do business with. We're wanting to consolidate resources for their organization and migrate them to a cPanel web host that supports mailman.
cPanel will be a complication if the old server is not also cPanel.
Is there any concern about mailman versions between servers or anything else I might not be thinking of? What's the best way to go about moving them to another server supporting mailman?
As long as both Mailman versions are 2.1.x and the target version is as new or newer than the source version and the source version uses the standard MemberAdaptor (i.e. no custom member database), this is normally completely straightforward. It may be complicated if going from non-cPanel to cPanel.
I can say with fair certainty that we don't have root access to the old server, so I'm not sure what needs to be planned for during a migration between service providers. Thanks.
You need to stop Mailman on the old server or at least be sure that your lists are 'quiet'. You need to get all the lists/*/config.pck files and all the archives/private/*.mbox/*.mbox files from the old server and move them to the new server.
The cPanel complication is that the *'s above are listnames and in a non-cPanel installation, the listname of the listx@example.com list is 'listx', but in cPanel it is 'listx_example.com', so those directories and files will need to be placed on the cPanel machine with their cPanel names. I think this is the only complication.
After moving the files, you should run Mailman's bin/check_perms to fix any permission issues, run fix_url and run 'bin/arch --wipe LISTNAME' using the cPanel listnames for each list to rebuild the pipermail archive on the new host.
I'm not sure exactly how to run fix_url in a cPanel installation or if it will even work, and I'm not sure it's necessary if the domain names aren't changing. I'm guessing for listx@example.com, you could run
bin/withlist -l -r fix_url listx_example.com -u example.com
but this may leave the list with an incorrect host_name. Maybe it's best to not run it, do one list as a test and if things are OK, just proceed.
There is other information in the FAQ at http://wiki.list.org/x/2oA9 and there are other FAQs about fix_url and cPanel
-- Mark Sapiro mark@msapiro.net The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
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Brian Carpenter -
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William Ashworth