Migrating XMail to a new system, A cloning guide ...

[hschneider]

How to clone:
Stop XMail server.
Copy all folders inside MailRoot except
- spool
- dnscache
- tabindex

This shortens copy time and assures a clean system.

Recreate the following folder structures:
- spool
- spool/local
- spool/temp
- dsncache
- dnscache/ns
- dnscache/mx
- tabindex

Attn: If you want to keep undelivered messages of the old system, leave the spool folder untouched and copy it completely.

Do the platform specific modifications, now (see below).
At this point you can archive your MailRoot folder as an backup image for disaster recovery.
After starting XMail on the new system, it will complete its folder structure and recreate all .tab indexes automatically.

Platform specific modifications:

Win32:
- Recreate XMail's registry key (see manual)
- Install the service (see manual)
- Use either Installer for this or reimport an export of your registry key. Don't forget to press the 'Update Registry' button, if you use the Installer.
- If you have IIS installed, make sure that the IIS SMTP service is disabled.

Linux or FreeBSD:
- Install the RPM if possible, this assures that sendmail is disabled and that the Xmail startup script is created. Otherwise, you'll need to disable sendmail and create all scripts and links manually.
- After that you can start cloning.
- After cloning, don't forget to
- chmod -R /var/MailRoot
- chown -R root:root /var/MailRoot (if files are not owned by root, yet)

How to clone across platforms?
It's easy: Just follow the instructions above and replace the MailRoot/bin folder with the target system's native binaries.

Double check your filters!
You have followed this guide up to here, but XMail won't run like it did before. No.1 reason for that are filters which miss some vital parts from the older system.

To find out, if you have a filter problem, just clear your filters.in.tab and filters.out.tab and restart XMal server. When it works now, then you can reduce your problem's scopt to your filters.

Doublecheck if you have copied all required files - even those located in other folders of your system. Filters also might need some special permissions on special files. Run your filters from command line and check, if they complain about missing MIME decoders or .pl modules ...

Also keep in mind, that the same filter might need different modules or calling conventions on different platforms or systems.

[rabbers]

This is sort of related:

What if you want to run side-by-side?

How do I get one XMail installation to forward all it's mail to a second installation? - this is important because I'm changing my colocation supplier and the IP numbers and everything will change. I want all delivered mail to end up in the new mail boxes during the DNS propogation.

Up to now I've tried the following:

1. Set up a domain and catch all account on the new xmail installation called test@redirect.test
2. Add a custdomain tab file called test.tab with "smtprelay[TAB]ipnumber[CRLF]" where the ipnumber is for the new machine. (I also tried it's DNS name).

The first server appears to attempt to deliver it normally, rather than running it through the custdomain filter and hence the second server.

NB) The old installation is version 1.9 - is this a known problem or am I just being an idiot?

[hschneider]

Use custdomains with redirect.

1.9 was long before I started to use XMail. Please upgrade first, to avoid other sources of error.

[bim]

I think you could also put
"*" "new.server"
in SMTPFWD.TAB. Where new.server would be the IP-address of the new serer. Seems like less work then setting up custdomains for every single domain. Or maybe I'm mistaking about this. Not sure, so first give it a try in a test-envyronment!

[rabbers]

Whehay - adding a line to SMTPFWD did the job!

Now I've just got to work out how to get me filters installed and I'm away