[Mailman-Users] Moving lists with large archives to new server

[Andrew Hodgson]

Hi,

I am required by my host to change server hardware as the current hardware is out of support and needs replacing.

I will be going from 32-Bit Debian Wheezy to 64-Bit Jessy when it is released, and will probably upgrade to Mailman 2.1.19 from 2.1.18-1 using my own custom made packages.

All the configs for the system will be pushed via Puppet including ~/Mailman/mm_cfg.py, and ~/lists and ~/data can be copied over very quickly.

My question revolves around the list archives.  If I start Mailman up before they are copied across, it is likely there will be waiting messages and these will get archived to a new mbox file.  I want to reduce downtime in moving the lists, but the mbox files are around 25GB, and there are a couple of lists which take the majority of that.  I was going to index the messages once the mbox files are copied over, but what is the smartest way to get these moved without downing Mailman for too long?

Thanks.
Andrew.