[Mailman-Users] howto restore list archives, configuration post hardware crash

[J C Lawrence]

On 16 Jan 2001 00:15:35 -0600 
Aaron M Johnson <amj at mqqn.net> wrote:

> I received the following message during an attempt to restore a
> mailman installation.  When our mailing list servers' hard drive
> crashed we decided to reinstall the OS from scratch.  This is a
> Debian box currently running mailman debian package version 1.1-6.
> I don't recall which version was on the system prior to the crash.
> If its important I could dig it up.  For backup of the archives I
> made a tar file of /var/lib/mailman and restored it on top of the
> new installation.  That lead to some problems.

1.1 is *old*.  The current Debian package is 2.0.  

You'll need to do the following:

  # dpkg --purge mailman
  
Then, untar your mailman backup in a DIFFERENT directory, and copy
the contents of .../lists to /var/lib/mailman/lists.  Additionally,
if you are using an alias file, copy that over as well, and
reconfigure your MTA appropriately.

Next examine .../Mailman/mm_cfg.py in your backup set for values you
tweaked for your local installation.  With care, comparing it
against the current contents of the new Mailman's mm_cfg.py and
Defaults.py, move any necessary customisations over.

Finally use the bin/update script to move your config.db files in
for each list over to the new format, and then run check_perms and
fix as appropriate.

-- 
J C Lawrence                                       claw at kanga.nu
---------(*)                          http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/
--=| A man is as sane as he is dangerous to his environment |=--