Completely reinstalling Scalix Server

[tuxx-home.at]

Hi there!

I'm having serious troubles with one of my customers Scalix Servers, I already discussed this in here but to no avail, the server simply doesn't work properly (here's the link to my other posting just in case anyone is interested): [http://www.scalix.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=10265]

What I want to do now is to do a complete fresh install of the whole server (operating system, scalix, whatever).

My questions:
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What distribution should I choose? If possible, I'd like to use Debian (although it isn't supported, but I found install scripts that work on Debian)

I suspect that there's some error in the current Scalix configuration/database which I don't want to migrate to the new installation, so if possible, I'd like to configure everything from the ground up new and import just the mails to the new installation then.
Is that possible? This isn't really a big mailserver (just a few mail accounts, so I can recreate them all by hand, no problem with that).

WRT backup: Is there anything special to consider during installation of the new operating system? I somewhere read that currently the only reliable backup way for Scalix is to do LVM snapshots. Is this still the case or has this changed in 11.4?

What would be my upgrade path? Do I need to first upgrade the current server to the latest scalix version and then export the mails to get them imported to the new server with the 11.4 scalix version?

I think I still haven't fully understood the necessary DNS configuration for scalix.
Let's say, my internal network has the DNS suffix "company.local" and the mailserver is reachable via "mail.company.com".

Will I need to configure the Scalix Server's /etc/hosts to us company.local or company.com in this case?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[mhoroschun]

What distribution should I choose? If possible, I'd like to use Debian (although it isn't supported, but I found install scripts that work on Debian)

Don't.

I *strongly* recommend that you use a supported platform.

I suspect that there's some error in the current Scalix configuration/database which I don't want to migrate to the new installation, so if possible, I'd like to configure everything from the ground up new and import just the mails to the new installation then.
Is that possible? This isn't really a big mailserver (just a few mail accounts, so I can recreate them all by hand, no problem with that).

From reading your prior thread I suspect your prior problems are due to OS/network configuration problems. Therefore, if you sort out these issues, and copy your /var/opt/scalix, /etc/opt/scalix/instance.cfg to your new box and do a install, you'll probably find that things work.

Otherwise you could use sxmboxexp and sxmboximp to export and import your mailboxes.

WRT backup: Is there anything special to consider during installation of the new operating system? I somewhere read that currently the only reliable backup way for Scalix is to do LVM snapshots. Is this still the case or has this changed in 11.4?

LVM is required if you want to backup Scalix without shutting it down. Even if you use LVM, you still need to suspend (omsuspend) Scalix while creating the snapshot.

I strongly recommend that you use LVM for (at least) /var/opt/scalix.

What would be my upgrade path? Do I need to first upgrade the current server to the latest scalix version and then export the mails to get them imported to the new server with the 11.4 scalix version?

I don't think you need to upgrade the old version (as long as its 11.x)

If you import/export mailboxes then sxmboximp will import older version mailboxes.

If you copy the entire mailstore the installer will detect and upgrade the old mailstore. You do need to run ompatchom after finishing the installer though.

I think I still haven't fully understood the necessary DNS configuration for scalix.
Let's say, my internal network has the DNS suffix "company.local" and the mailserver is reachable via "mail.company.com".

Will I need to configure the Scalix Server's /etc/hosts to us company.local or company.com in this case?

Assuming the box had an IP address of 192.168.1.2, you should have a line in /etc/hosts like:

Code: Select all

192.168.1.2  mail.company.com mail


You must ensure that the DNS zone for "company.com" is set up properly. You must have a forward "A" record for mail.company.com to the correct IP address.

This can get a bit tricky if you're behind NAT since your mail server will have both a public and a private IP address. I find that there are three ways to do this cleanly. You can choose which suits you best.

1. Use NAT-loopback (configure your NAT router to allow internal hosts to connect to the public IP address of an internal server)

2. Use split-DNS (inside your network, mail.company.com resolves to 192.168.1.2, outside it resolves to the public address)

3. Put the mail server in public address space


Good luck!

Matthew.

[kanderson]

If you want a free OS, use CENTOS5. Otherwise take your pick of Red Hat Enterprise Linux5 or SuSE Linux Enterprise Server10. You could choose Xandros, it's built from Debian, but I doubt that's what you're after. I'd advise CentOS.

You can make a backup of user data with sxmboxexp, and then reimport it with sxmboximp. This can also do public folders, but it won't by default.

You read wrong. sxmboxexp will create a reliable and supportable backup for an individual user mailbox. LVM is used for creating a full achive of the entire mail store. Their purposes are different, but similar. sxmboxexp is like exporting data into a PST. Flexible, easy to work with. But slow if you need to import data for 500 users (torture if you have to import 50000 - and that's ignoring the timeline that would be involved) LVM will allow a very fast bare metal restore, but it sucks for recovering a single message. It can be done, but most never do it.

Export the user data. SCP/rsync it somewhere else. give it a reasonableness check. If they're 10K in size and you have 5 years worth of data, there's a problem. You can do a reasonable comparison against sxdu. After you're confident you have good backups, (heck, try importing them into the current server. so you see dupilcates, who cares, you're just wiping out the server anyway). After the backups are safe, just install the new OS, including a reformat of all the partitions. Then install Scalix, Create the users, and reimport the data.

Company.com. When your server sends mail, it will announce itself as the fully qualified name that you gave to that server. the remote server may (some do, some don't) check to see that that name is valid, and that it maps to the IP address that you are seen as having come from (likely your firewall). Internally, you can have either name in DNS, though I'd recommend setting it up correctly, and using a cname/alias for the .local address.

Again, set it to .com. The .local/.pri/.int/whatever is only here because MS's DNS servers suck. Configure it correctly (.com) so that when you create an Outlook profile, you can use mail.whatever.com, and it'll work to connect you to the server from both inside and outside your network. Worry about making the .pri stuff work after the fact, but the server itself doesn't need to be involved. That's just an entry on your DNS server.