Stop mail delivery

[donkeyKICK]

What is the best way to stop all mail delivery temporarly? Is simply stopping dovecot enough to completely stop email?

I am moving users from one server to another, and don't want any email lost in the process. The move won't take long, maybe 20 or 30 minutes for the backup and restore. After the move, I want all the mail delivered, not bounced back as undeliverable.

 

[nobaloney]

You should stop exim from the control panel. Not from the shell, but from the control panel.

Here's how we make certain all exim processes are stopped:

First we stop exim from the control panel.

Then from the shell:

# service exim stop
# killall exim
# killall -9 exim

Jeff

 

[donkeyKICK]

Thank you!

I'll following your steps to the letter, and since you didn't mention dovecot, I assume I don't need to do anything with it.

 

[nobaloney]

Users use Dovecot to get mail; if that's a problem for you turn it off. But it has nothing to do with mail getting to/from the server. The worst that can happen is that some users may get some email twice.

To me that's better than inconveniencing them and getting support calls when you're really better off concentrating on the move.

Jeff