Hi. Well, Mailman and Linode have been very trouble-free for the last year (or more). It's been great! We are making some changes although we are sticking with Mailman and Linode. We are moving to a new physical server (and new OS -- Debian). Our hostname and domain name are not changing. (In fact, our IP address won't change either, thanks to Linode's ability to easily swap IP addresses between servers.)
Our sysadmin has the new Debian server set up, Mailman is installed and our lists are copied over. This new server does not yet have our domain name or IP address. We want to test the new setup before making those changes. I would appreciate some recommendations for how to do this testing. What mail functions can we test? (Our MX records don't point to the new server yet.) Afaik, we can't really test normal mail processing in advance of making the final cut-over (or can we?). Are there things in addition to changing /etc/hosts that I can implement on my computer for testing the new Mailman server? Any ideas or suggestions are appreciated. Also, in terms of the actual cut-over, how can we avoid bounced or lost messages if it takes several hours to transition? My plan is roughly something like this: First I will moderate any pending messages. Then I will stop mailman. At this point our sysadmin will do a final data migration. Then I will shut down the server. I will do the IP swap at Linode. Then I will boot up the new server. I hope we can do all that within a window of about an hour. I appreciate any advice on this too. For reference, here are some posts I have read in preparation for this move: How do I move a list to a different server-Mailman installation. - Documentation - Confluence http://wiki.list.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=4030682 Re: [Mailman-Developers] Upgrading from 2.0.10 to 2.1.b2 http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-developers@python.org/msg03127.html [Mailman-Users] migrating mailman lists http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2007-January/055208.html [Mailman-Users] migrating mailman lists http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2007-January/055211.html [Mailman-Users] export/import of lists http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/2004-June/037086.html BTW, does anyone have an itemized check list of all files that need to be copied? The posts above are not 100% complete (afaik) because, for example, they don't consider that some apache config settings may be related to Mailman. In our case we have ScriptAlias /m/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/mailman/ and related changes. Furthermore, files like /etc/mailname are related to Mailman configuration. If anyone has or can come up with an itemized, file-by-file, checklist, I would like to be able to offer that to our sysadmin. The only alternative I know is a trial and error approach to making sure we don't overlook anything, and I prefer to avoid that method (especially the "and error" part!). Regards, David ------------------------------------------------------ Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org
