[Mailman-Users] What is really required to go from 2.0.x to 2.1.y?

[Christopher Waltham]

I am almost hesitant to post this email at all, because I am so amazingly confused at what is going on I half-think I'm imagining it.

I have a Mailman 2.0.12 instance (not 2.0.5 as I previously thought, sorry Mark) running on a Solaris 8 SPARC server, which I'd planned to move onto a Linux RHEL4 x86 server using Mailman 2.1.9. In both cases, Mailman would be installed into /home/mailman to minimize configuration changes. In both cases, the hostname of the server would be list.bowdoin.edu. In both cases, /home/mailman would actually be served via NFS. And, oh yeah, I'm switching MTAs too (Postfix to sendmail). 

So, I made a copy of /home/mailman (which is actually on a NetApp) in case I had to revert my migration from Solaris to Linux. This was my workflow on the Linux server:

* mount a fresh copy of /home/mailman (which is Mailman 0.12 from Solaris)
* rm -rf /home/mailman/Mailman (because I'm switching MTAs)
* configure Mailman 2.1.9 using the following string: "./configure --prefix=/home/mailman --with-urlhost=list.bowdoin.edu --with-mailhost=list.bowdoin.edu --with-cgi-gid=apache --with-mail-gid=mail"
* run "make install"
* watch as "make install" runs "bin/update", it fails on a couple of lists. Remove the offending lists, re-run "bin/update", watch it run successfully.
* "rm /home/mailman/locks/* ; rm /home/mailman/qfiles/* ; rm /home/mailman/data/pending_subscriptions.db" just to make sure
* run "bin/check_perms -f", watch it run successfully.
* run "bin/genaliases", paste output into /etc/aliases, run "newaliases"
* run "bin/mm_sitepass"
* run "bin/mailmanctl start"

The problem is when I run "bin/list_members" on a list of whose membership I know well. Amazingly, when I run that command, I see list members from around 2-3 years ago; I do not see list members whom I absolutely know are on that list. And then, well, I get so confused I can hardly stand. :)

What on earth is going on here? I have seen URLs like http://acd.ucar.edu/~fredrick/linux/mailman/upgrading.html and http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users@python.org/msg13279.html with hints for migrating server and versions at the same time; specifically running the fix_url command to update URLs for archives. But, I'm keeping the same hostname (list.bowdoin.edu) from both Solaris and Linux, so I don't bother with this.

Does anyone have the faintest idea of what's going on? It's like I'm seeing a ghost. I know that copy of /home/mailman is, pre-upgrade, the same from the Sun server to the Linux server because there are unique files in there which I've placed myself.

FWIW, I just made *another* copy of the /home/mailman directory from the Sun server, mounted it on the Linux server and DID NOT UPGRADE IT. Lo and behold, when I run bin/list_members, I see _correct_ users, _not old ones_.

Thoughts? Am I going crazy?

Thanks,


Chris