*BSD News Article 53269


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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!newshost.telstra.net!kettle.magna.com.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!simtel!news.sprintlink.net!dfw.nkn.net!rowdy.lonestar.org!nemesis!uhclem
From: uhclem@nemesis.lonestar.org (Frank Durda IV)
Subject: Re: Migrating from SCO Unix to FreeBSD - What about the Email
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL5
Organization: The Big Blue Box
Message-ID: <DGoHuu.KCD@nemesis.lonestar.org>
References: <814020090.1914@kiss.demon.co.uk>
Date: Thu, 19 Oct 1995 04:30:28 GMT
Lines: 37

[0]Phil Taylor (phil@zipmail.co.uk) wrote:
[0]Does anyone know of a way to automatically forward ALL mail from one
[0]server to another, including any mail sitting in the MMDF queue
[0]waiting to deliver via SMTP ?

For the local mail, tar the /var/spool/mail (/usr/spool/mail on SCO)
and extract it on the new system.  You will have to fix ownerships on
the files if your UIDs don't exactly match, but this fix-up can be automated
with a simple script.  This is what we did.  (The process also pointed-out
some user accounts we failed to re-create, since the chown failed.)

As to the MMDF queue, we didn't have one (smail site), but we did have 
smail deferred SMTP queues.  We also used tar and simply put the files back
in the appropriate queue on the remote system.

If that won't work for you, drain the queue by blocking incoming mail
and let as much drain as possible.   Then manually forward the residual,
OR re-route it all to some other system that isn't being migrated.  Let
the mail take an extra hop and sit in someone else's queue during your
upgrade.   The users who receive the mail probably won't notice a thing.

I did an identical upgrade recently, from SCO UNIX 3.2.4 to 2.0.5.  It was
messy (lots of automated scripts and user things that relied on SCOisms
that broke and had to be tracked-down), but I do not regret the move. 
Nor do the users who had things work correctly for the first time since
we sold the VAX 11/780 running 4.3 BSD.

I do miss the multi-port boards that have no drivers under any of the
BSDs (or Linux), and that was one big negative.  We had to do a lot
of kludging to make up for the lost serial ports.


Frank Durda IV <uhclem@nemesis.lonestar.org>|"The Knights who say "LETNi"
or uhclem%nemesis@fw.ast.com (Fastest Route)| demand...  A SEGMENT REGISTER!!!"
...letni!rwsys!nemesis!uhclem               |"A what?"
...decvax!fw.ast.com!nemesis!uhclem         |"LETNi! LETNi! LETNi!"  - 1983