[Mailman-Users] Moving mailman to a new machine

[Barry A. Warsaw]

>>>>> "EW" == Ed Wilts <ewilts at ewilts.org> writes:

    EW> I've done this twice.  It's not trivial (at least it wasn't
    EW> for me), but it can be done.

Yeah, I've done it /at least/ that many times, and I completely
agree. ;/

Every time I move a Mailman installation I think about how nice it
would be to make it easier, but then other things always take
precedence.

It's complicated by the need to coordinate with your web server and
incoming mail.  You need to shut those down while you move your lists,
or you risk having to resync your config.db files.  My approach has
been to do a fresh install of the software in the new location, make
sure that works independently of your old install, then move the lists
one by one.

IIRC, first I move the list/<mylist> subdir, and the
archives/private/<mlist>.mbox directory.  Then you run bin/move_list
(to fix the entirely bogus directories in the config.db file -- I
should get rid of this for 2.1).  Then you run bin/arch to regenerate
the archives.  I usually then hit the list via the web and twiddle the
private/public archive option to make sure that the proper symlinks
are put in place.

After that, I set up Apache and MTA redirects so that all web and mail
references to that moved list go to the new location.  Then I turn
incoming web and mail back on.  The list should now functional in the
new location.

If I had the time, I would do two things to make this less painful:

- Get rid of the public_archive_file_dir, private_archive_file_dir,
  and archive_directory attributes of the MailList object and have
  Mailman calculate them instead.  This would remove the need for
  bin/move_list.

- Make bin/arch automatically create the symlinks for public
  archives.

no-good-answers-ly y'rs,
-Barry