Scalix conversion from old IMAP mail to new Scalix Server

[SidebandSamurai]

Hello everyone.

I hope everybody here had an exellent holiday season, I know I did.

I have a customer who had their e-mail / file / dns / dhcp server hacked recently with a root kit. My customer has finally relized the value of having seperate servers for specific services. My first project is to upgrade from old IMAP e-mail to a new e-mail server. I have selected Scalix (YEA!) as the solution. I have done a lot of reading, but a lot of this goes in one eye and out the other. So to start off here is my system configuration:

Pentium 4 2.66 GHZ (LGA 775 Package)
1 Gig Ram
3 x Hitachi 7K250 SATA Hard drive
LSI Logic SATA 150-6 RAID Card Configured as RAID 5
Asus P5WD2

I have already installed Fedora Core 4 Partitianed and installed as per the instructions on this website. One mistake I found early was the intallation of Tomcat, which I uninstalled and will allow the installation wizard to install tomcat itself.

My questions are as follows:

I have the old e-mail server which is currently receiving the e-mail, and the new scalix e-mail server which is currently waiting on the server software install.

1. Once Scalix is installed, how do I move the old e-mail from the old server to the new server? I have read the e-mail conversion HowTo entitled: "Using IMAP to IMAP Migration with Compusven". I have some e-mail users that have 600+ mb imap files. How much does Compusven cost? Are there other alternatives that I can use? I have had to convert most of the old e-mail accounts to mbx format to solve some technical problems.

2.. Can I phase in the new scalix server? I would like to Convert one or two users at a time. If this is possible, how would I tell the old mail server to not accept mail for the users already converted to Scalix? Would I forward the e-mail from the old account to the new account until I can shut the old server service down?

3. Fedora Core did not detect the internal NIC card, it uses the e1000 driver. Is there an installation RPM package for this NIC? or will I have to build this system from source. I am relectuent to build from source because I don't want to install development tools on the system. As I had recently discovered. the hacker's root kit needed to be compiled on my system in order for it to work, and I unkownely provided this person everything needed to do the job. I would perfer to make life harder by not providing these utilties if at all possible.

4. Backups - I have seen some postings about backups. As my next project, I will be rolling out bacula (http://www.bacula.org/). I will be backing up to hard drive, then backing up the hard drive to tape. The reson for this is my customer already has a 20/40GB tape backup. Current backups exceed 3 tapes. In addition we are moving to two servers that are critical to company operations. Using Bacula will allow me to backup both the fileserver and the e-mail server at night. During the day the backups can then be moved to tape and the tapes can be changed when people are in the office through out the day. How are backup's performed on the Scalix server? What are the best practices used when backing up Scalix? I have read stuff about taking a snapshot and backing that up. I am running LVM so I can expand the scalix data volume later, would I have to write a script to take this Snapshot?

5. Installation - What is Mail Node Name? if my domain was mydomain.com and my server name was grumpy.mydomain.com, then the Mail Node Name would be grumpy,(Comma)mydomain.com not grumpy.(dot)mydomain.com? Or am I not getting it at all and the domain is some other name that Scalix uses. If this is the case, I manufacture a name called "MyCompanysEmail" then the answer to the above question, with standing the comma or dot "MyCompanysEmail,mydomain.com" or "MyCompanysEmail.mydomain.com" instead of the physical name of the server (grumpy). I want to make sure I answer this question accurately, not just simply accept the defaults.

Well I think I have asked plenty of questions right now. Thank you all in advance for your help.

Sincerely,

Sideband Samurai

[cmcnabb]

I have had some of these issues, so let's see if I can help some until someone from Scalix gives you some other answers.

1. The CompuSven tool is not the best tool to use, but it does work. I have migrated a 1GB mailbox. Yes, it took a little while, and there were issues, but they weren't anything that I didn't learn to work around and prevent as I started moving other people.

2. Yes, you most certainly can phase in the server. That is what I am doing. I am in the process of migrating all of my users, but some are using win98, which is not supported, so I have to upgrade. Since we are a smaller company, we can't do all at once. I move about 5 people at a time, give or take. If you contact support, they have quite a few experts in the whole migration process, and they have seen just about anything you could possibly run into. And, they are good.

5. Mail node, for the most part, can be whatever you want it to be called. I only have my server name in my mailnode, not server name, location and I have no problems with it. I can understand why you would want that, but since mine is the only scalix server, I don't really have a problem getting them confused. As far as I can tell, the mailnode name will only be used by you internally.

Hope I answered some questions, and that it helped you a little bit.
-Chad

[ScalixSupport]

Hello everyone.

1. Once Scalix is installed, how do I move the old e-mail from the old server to the new server? I have read the e-mail conversion HowTo entitled: "Using IMAP to IMAP Migration with Compusven". I have some e-mail users that have 600+ mb imap files. How much does Compusven cost? Are there other alternatives that I can use? I have had to convert most of the old e-mail accounts to mbx format to solve some technical problems.

Hi, the Compusven tool is the standard solution, others are available. Imapsync is one of them.

2.. Can I phase in the new scalix server? I would like to Convert one or two users at a time. If this is possible, how would I tell the old mail server to not accept mail for the users already converted to Scalix? Would I forward the e-mail from the old account to the new account until I can shut the old server service down?

Absolutely, just set a forward on your old mail system to the new host.

3. Fedora Core did not detect the internal NIC card, it uses the e1000 driver. Is there an installation RPM package for this NIC? or will I have to build this system from source. I am relectuent to build from source because I don't want to install development tools on the system. As I had recently discovered. the hacker's root kit needed to be compiled on my system in order for it to work, and I unkownely provided this person everything needed to do the job. I would perfer to make life harder by not providing these utilties if at all possible.

I can't really help you with your hardware setup. Best approach would be to use standard, well-known components that stood the test of time.

You could always delete the development environment after the server was set up.

4. Backups - I have seen some postings about backups. As my next project, I will be rolling out bacula (http://www.bacula.org/). I will be backing up to hard drive, then backing up the hard drive to tape. The reson for this is my customer already has a 20/40GB tape backup. Current backups exceed 3 tapes. In addition we are moving to two servers that are critical to company operations. Using Bacula will allow me to backup both the fileserver and the e-mail server at night. During the day the backups can then be moved to tape and the tapes can be changed when people are in the office through out the day. How are backup's performed on the Scalix server? What are the best practices used when backing up Scalix? I have read stuff about taking a snapshot and backing that up. I am running LVM so I can expand the scalix data volume later, would I have to write a script to take this Snapshot?

We do provide a tool for backup, it can be found in the tools directory. Yes, we do support LVM backup snapshots, that is the recommended solution.

5. Installation - What is Mail Node Name? if my domain was mydomain.com and my server name was grumpy.mydomain.com, then the Mail Node Name would be grumpy,(Comma)mydomain.com not grumpy.(dot)mydomain.com? Or am I not getting it at all and the domain is some other name that Scalix uses. If this is the case, I manufacture a name called "MyCompanysEmail" then the answer to the above question, with standing the comma or dot "MyCompanysEmail,mydomain.com" or "MyCompanysEmail.mydomain.com" instead of the physical name of the server (grumpy). I want to make sure I answer this question accurately, not just simply accept the defaults.

A mailnode is simply a name to organize your users, you can name it (almost) anything you want. Most people use some name which resembles their organisation, like scalix,uk or scalix, dk but this is entirely up to you.

Cheers,

Sascha.

[SidebandSamurai]

Hi, the Compusven tool is the standard solution, others are available. Imapsync is one of them.

Are these comercial products and if so how much do they cost. How do I get these products?

A mailnode is simply a name to organize your users, you can name it (almost) anything you want. Most people use some name which resembles their organisation, like scalix,uk or scalix, dk but this is entirely up to you.

So this is really an orgizational unit. Would I be able to rename the mail node if necessary? For example I wanted to go with mycompany,us for now, but if the company grew and had other scalix servers then I would want to rename mycompany,us to something like mycompany,mycity. Would that be possible? and is it easily done?

Thanks for all your help.

Sincerely,

Sideband Samurai

[ScalixSupport]

Are these comercial products and if so how much do they cost. How do I get these products?

Please send in licensing questions to info@scalix.com and someone will get back to you. Imapsync is free (http://freshmeat.net/projects/imapsync/)

So this is really an orgizational unit. Would I be able to rename the mail node if necessary? For example I wanted to go with mycompany,us for now, but if the company grew and had other scalix servers then I would want to rename mycompany,us to something like mycompany,mycity. Would that be possible? and is it easily done?

Well, theoretically, yes. Have a look at "man ommodmn" . Things become a little more tricky when directory synchronisation is in place and you rename the primary mailnode. It can of course be done and is pretty straightforward.

Cheers,

Sascha.