I have migrated all of my sites, users, and other flotsam and jetsam to my new server, and I now would like to finally move over the DNS for all of the domains and finally kill the old server.

I think I should do the following:
1) stop sendmail on the old box
2) move the mailbox contents
3) point DNS to the new box
4) forward the old IPs to the new
Is this a good plan (as far as it goes)?

I can do steps 1 and 3, but I need some help with 2 and 4. I have Ensim 4 on the old server and Ensim Pro X on the new server. Note: all users on the old box have been set up on the new server.

Should I just manually move all of the mailboxes to the new server?

I am okay leaving the old server running for a few days to make sure all of the DNS changes have propagated, but I really only need to forward mail (25, 110, 587), http, and https. Can anyone help me? I have the same 8 sites on each server.

Thanks,
Alden

2.
moving the mailbox content might be tricky. Since the sites are chrooted, you will need to make sure you put them in the right location. Also make sure that you chown them to the correct user. When you copy it, I would suggest either tarballing it, or if you end up copying using cp, make sure you use the -p flag to keep the permissions, and ownership the same.


4.

this really depends on where your server is. If it is in houston, you will need to use iptables or a program called redir to forward the ports to the new server since the ips cant be transfered unless they are on the same switch.

If it is dallas, the vlans will make this easy for you, and the ips can just be moved to the new server.

Personally, I would suggest creating the accounts on the new server, then copying over content instead of trying to copy the actual mailboxes. If you end up with inconsistencies in Ensim, its going to be a nightmare.

Good luck, and let us know if there is anything we can help you with!

2. Since I have all of the users set up already, I am happy to move just the contents of the mailboxes over.
So, to move the contents, do I just tar up the /home/virtual/sitename/var/mail folder? Or is there a better way?

4. D'oh! I forgot to mention that the old server is hosted at an outside provider. Would you give me a quick example of an iptables forward, please?

Thanks,
Alden

I heard from someone over at linuxquestions.org, who recommended just adding the new mail server to the DNS as a secondary server, then later shutting down the mail on the first server, so everything will go to the second!

So, I will change my zone settings for the name servers I have (to add the old mail server as a high priority mail server), then change the DNS to point to the new name servers, wait, shut down the old server, then bring the mail over.