Re: [exim] Moving mailboxes...

Max wrote:

> I'm in the process of migrating our mailboxes from one nfs server to
> another. I'm trying to figure out a nice way to perform this migration
> without having to stop exim.

Just a quick thought (could be flawed!) - Exim only handles SMTP, so you
don't have to worry about it touching files already delivered to mailboxes.
If you stop POP3/IMAP services, you could then just synchronize your
mailboxes with the new storage system (files being written should be locked
so it won't copy partial emails) using something like rsync while leaving
Exim running.

Then, when your new storage system is in place and ready to go live, you
temporarily stop Exim and then re-start it once the new storage system is in
place. With the old one offline, and only Exim still running - you should
only ever have MORE files (never less), so you would then just re-run rsync
to re-synchronize your list of files (so you're copying any missing files
from the old filesystem to the new one - but the new one may have files the
old one does not... no files should ever be deleted on either side).

This should give you the new storage system with no missing files (since
only SMTP access was allowed to it). Once that's done, start up your
POP/IMAP services and you should be good to go. Hopefully I didn't overlook
anything in this theory, but I think it's what I've done in the past and has
worked quite well for me.

Eli.