replication newbie: some beginner questions

[@lbutlr]

On 15 Apr 2020, at 07:50, Stefan G. Weichinger <lists at xunil.at> wrote:
> So I think about how to get the mailboxes from A to B.
> 
> We use one UID afaik:
> 
> mail_home = /home/vmail/%d/%u
> mail_location = maildir:~
> 
> I read about dsync and wonder:
> 
> * does it make sense in this case to set up replication and let the
> servers replicate at first while still running on the old server?

I ave done this (dovevot mailers under a email user) and I simply used rsync to copy the mail to the new machine.

Once I had synced, I then synced again, shutdown the mail server, synced on last time, and started the mail server on the new hardware. The last sync only had to catch up a few emails, so all told I was down for a shorter time than a simple reboot.

That said, doing it via replication would have been “better” but in my case wasn’t worth the time it would have taken to setup, test, test, backup all the mail an extra time anyway, and then implement.

I’m about to do it all over again since old machine running the Mailserver cannot seem to boot properly to install FreeNSD amd64 despite being a 64bit Intel (It’s a BIOS/EFI issue), so I am dropping in a new, albeit still old, replacement with a zpool of three SSD drives (up from the current setup of 2 SSDs with backups on the second drive and on a second machine and on a remote machine)




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