Migration Advice Question..

D

davidb

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Oct 9, 2004
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Just read through another thread and would like to get thoughts from the experts here on how to migrate..

Current environment
-RH9 with DA 1.33
-NFS mounted /home and /var/log/httpd directories
-Mysql db's in /dbdata (located on seperate RAID array)
-Custom exim.conf with black lists & off-box spam filter

Goal
-Migrate everything to Centos 5.2 x_64 with DA 1.33
-Maintain same IP addresses

Obviously, using NFS to move the /home directories makes the whole operation faster, but I need to get everything else migrated.

What are your thoughts as the experts on how to move to the new server? I have the flexibility of an outtage window when I can turn off services and can allocate extra IP addresses.

What I need is some guidance on doing this migration.

Thanks for any of your thoughts and direction!
 
All the data related to the user accounts.

Run the backup on the old server.
Transfer the backups to a safe place.
Prepare your new server by installing the OS and DirectAdmin.
Transfer the backups to the new server.
Run the restore.
 
Unfortunately I really don't need to transfer the home directories. Is there any way to do the admin backup and exclude the home dirs backups? Everything else (mail, mysql, etc we need..)
 
The System Backup allows quite a bit of granularity, but it's an administrator tool, not a backup/restore system. You'd have to figure out what to save and you'd have to figure out how to do the restore yourself; there's no restore tools for the System Backup.

Jeff
 
Hmm.. is there a list of what needs to be transferred? Or is there a way to alter the behavior of the admin backup scripts?
 
Since you are talking about doing a one time transfer then just before doing the backup:

Code: 
mv /home/username /home/usernameOLD
mkdir /home/username/domains/
chown -R username:username /home/username

Now the backup will create a backup with the domains directory empty.

This probably would not be good for backing up on a regular basis.
 
Excuse the ignorance, but I haven't done all the reading about dovecot and the implications of it. The current system does not use dovecot, but the custom build on the new system does. What do I need to do to get all the existing mailboxes converted?
 
I don't know if you have to or not but its probably best if you convert to dovecot on the old machine first and in that case you will also need to save the home directory of the users when you do the backup because that is where the mail is stored.
 
I believe that John has posted here on these forums that the admin reseller level backup/restore does the conversion for you if necessary.

Jeff
 
ok.. this keeps getting more and more fun.. I am doing some piloting and here is what I have so far..

users MUST be created in the same order as the admin backup/restore does not save the UID/GID

Either I must convert the RH9 box to dovecot and hope nothing explodes or figure out some way to do this by hand.

have to do some screwy custom scripting to keep the admin backups from hosing me..


So, does anyone have input on doing the dovecot conversions by hand?
 
Let me start by saying I have used the Admin Backup/Transfer dozens of times.

users MUST be created in the same order as the admin backup/restore does not save the UID/GID
Click to expand...

Why do you need the original UID and GID? I never have. In fact it better NOT use the original UID and GID since at some point you may be restoring to a server that already uses that UID and GID.

Either I must convert the RH9 box to dovecot and hope nothing explodes or figure out some way to do this by hand.
Click to expand...

Jeff has already said that backup and restore procedure will do this for you.

have to do some screwy custom scripting to keep the admin backups from hosing me
Click to expand...

Why? What do think is going to get hosed?

You seem to think that the backup/restore is doing something wrong but you don't tell us what you think it is.
 
On the UID/GID, this is critical.. they need to match since I do NOT want the admin backup/restore to deal with moving the home dirs as this will be done through mounting the NFS location on the new server.. I have almost 1TB of data contained in the home dirs.. The UID/GID must match or I will spend way too much time fixing ownership issues.

I went ahead an converted to Dovecot. 6 hours of converting mailboxes, but it is done..


Now I think I will simply be moving bits by hand..

let see /etc/named.conf, /etc/virtual, /usr/local/directadmin/users/*, /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow, /var/named, /etc/exim.conf, modify the httpd.conf...
 
You can create users on the new server with specific UID/GID settings; run man useradd on your server for instructions. Or you can edit (perhaps a scripted edit) your /etc/passwd file and your /etc/group file to change the UID/GID settings.

Jeff
 
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