Here’s how a Linux/Scalix n00b (me) was able to transfer his (my) email server to a new system. All names mentioned are Scalix Support people
1) Getting started. What do I do first?
From what I had read I knew the basic idea was to move everything from /var/opt/scalix directory to the new server. But that was pretty much all I knew. I thought that I might just use RSYNC to move everything, but to be sure that was cool I posted my idea to this forum. Don was the first to respond. He said that I should not use RSYNC as that would foul up all the permissions. He didn’t really give any alternative, but there’s more….
2) Maintaining permissions. Mother may I take three baby steps forward?
Rachel suggested that I could just physically move my hard drive to the new system and be done. But that didn’t really work for me, so I had to continue looking for a way to move the data and maintain permissions. But how? I tried a couple of different thisgs myself. I tried doing this:
a. Shut down Scalix on old server (omshut)
b. type: cp -Rp /var/opt/scalix /temp/scalix/directoy
c. Shut down Scalix on new server
Then I realized I didn’t know how to get the data from the temp directory I had made to the new server. What’s the equivalent of a Windows file share on Linux? I think it’s SMB. So I tinkered with that for awhile, but could figure out how to pull the data using the command line. So then I tried this:
d. CD into /var/opt (on the new server)
e. type: scp –Crp root@old.server.ip :/var/opt/*
That pulled a lot of data (took about 20 minutes to complete). In fact it started pulling everything from the root home. Oddly it got some of the Scalix data, but large chunks were missing. Still not sure why.
So far, everyone had told me to install Linux, then Scalix, and then move the data. Then Florian posted some interesting facts, which really got things moving forward.
3) Learning to export the filesystem. Meeting Florian the Frankfurter.
Florian then posted a very verbose list of procedures. Basically she had said to do this:
a. Install Linux, but NOT Scalix. As least not yet.
b. Query the old server to determine the numerical user and group ID’s of the user
Scalix User and the group Scalix
c. Use groupadd & useradd on the new server to create exact duplicate accounts.
(note: Florian had some of the command in quotes in her instructions. The
commands did not work for me until I removed the quotes)
d. Export the filesystem on the old server using ‘nfs’
e. Mount the export on the new server using ‘mount’
f. Then use the cp command to copy files from the mounted directory
g. ONLY THEN install Scalix. It will detect the files as an existing message store and
ask if you want to delete them. Tell the installer NOT to delete the message store
and then move forward.
She also gave me instruction on how to change the FQDN of the server. But I had already decided not to do that.
I repeated these steps (a-f) for the /etc/opt/scalix too. That directory contained my SWA and SAC settings.
4) Post-install problems.
The server was now up and receiving mail. I did have two little issues. I found that I could not login to SAC after the move. I would an error saying something about not being able to fetch base server settings. As it turned out, my host file didn’t have an entry for localhost (127.0.0.1). Once I added that I was good there. Just a N00b mistake.
I was also getting a weird message when shutting down Tomcat. I posted this problem online and Dave suggested I read this sticky post :
http://www.scalix.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=720
Basically I just added this:
-Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true
To the existing JAVA_OPTS information. Then SAC was all better.
So that’s it! I wanted to thank (again) everyone at Scalix who helped me on this. The whole procedure took me a total of 15 hours. But now that I actually know what to do, I bet I could do it in less than 2 hours. You can read the bulk the original postings (including Florians entire procedure) here:
http://www.scalix.com/community/viewtop ... highlight=
Bluemike
Mike Baker
http://itninja.buzznet.com