[Mailman-Users] Moving Configurations and Lists to a New Server

[Mark Sapiro]

On 06/05/2014 04:27 AM, Steve Matzura wrote:
> I'm ready for the next step, which is to
> move an entire configuration and mail spool from an old Debian
> 5+Mailman 2.1.11 server.
> 
> I imagine the spool (/var) files can just be tar'd and moved en masse.


Yes and no. You do not want to move the locks/, logs/ or qfiles/
directories and spam/ is probably non-existent or empty. It's probably
not necessary to move anything from data/ but that reqwuires some thought.


> But what about mailman configuration files--mailing list info, that
> sort of thing? What should be moved, what should be re-created, etc.?


 See the FAQ at <http://wiki.list.org/x/2oA9>

You do want to move the lists/ directory in its entirety except maybe
the lists/mailman/ site list if you have already set that up on the new
server. That moves list configs, membership, etc.

If host/domain names are changing, you will need to run fix_url; see the
FAQ at <http://wiki.list.org/x/mIA9>.

You also maybe need to run bin/genaliases if your MTA uses mailman
generated aliases and you didn't move them from data/

Archives can be an issue. You can move the entire archives/private/
directory and that should be OK, but people sometimes run into
permissions issues following that. It is best not to move
archives/public/, but if you do, make sure that you end up moving the
symlinks and not their targets. archives/public/ contains only symlinks
into archives/private and these will be created as appropriate by
Mailman as lists are accessed.

If host/domain names are changing, The cleanest process is to move only
the archives/private/LISTNAME.mbox/LISTNAME.mbox files and rebuild the
HTML archive with bin/arch for each list, but there are downsides to
this. If some lists have scrub_nondigest = Yes, the scrubbed attachments
will be lost in this process, and if there are unescaped "From " lines
in messages that will cause problems too (see bin/cleanarch).

-- 
Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net>        The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan