How to migrate a mailman mailinglist from one server to another
===============================================================

---- Recent note 2006-03-08 ----
This whole thingy is a little bit outdated and has only been
used with mailman 1.x releases. With mailman 2.x a lot of
things changed so that a 1.x -> 2.x migration is a lot more
complex.
In general most things here should still work but you've been
warned!
---------------------------------



Let's say we have a mailingliste test-list hostet on a server
called srv1 and we want to migrate this list to a server called
srv2. That's quite easy and can be done step by step.
There is only one problem, you can not export a memberlist with all
the passwords for import an the destination system. All users will
get a new password for the webfrontend.

Step 1:
=======
Login on srv2 and add a new malinglist with the newlist comand

---
newlist test-list
---

Step 2:
=======
Login through the webfrontend on srv1 and set the list into moderated
mode and allow only new subscribtions with admin approval.
So now you have the list in a quite freed state and you can begin
to export all the data you need to set up the list on srv2.

Step 3:
=======
Export the configuration, memberlist and copy the mbox file to a
directory so that you can tar and then scp them to srv2

(pathes to the commands are valid for Debian 3.0)
---
bkupdir=/home/mlb/mlbkup

mkdir $bkupdir

#safe the configuration
/var/lib/mailman/bin/config_list -o $bkupdir/config.out test-list

#safe the memberlist
/var/lib/mailman/bin/list_members -o $bkupdir/member.out test-list

#cp the mbox file
cp /var/lib/mailman/archives/private/test-list.mbox/test-list.mbox $bkupdir

#and then tar it all
cd /home/mlb/
tar -cj mlbkup -f /home/mlb/ml-backup.tar.bz2

#and scp it to the destination
scp /home/mlb/ml-backup.tar.bz2 mlb@srv2:
---

Step 4:
=======
Login again on srv2 and untar the exports.

---
tar -jxf ml-backup.tar.bz2
---

and then start to import everything

---
#import the memberlist
/var/lib/mailman/bin/list_members -i /home/mlb/mlbkup/member.out test-list

#import the configuration
/var/lib/mailman/bin/config_list -i /home/mlb/mlbkup/config.out test-list

#cp the mbox file
cp /home/mlb/mlbkup/test-list.mbox /var/lib/mailman/archives/private/test-list.mbox/test-list.mbox

#rebuild the web archiv
/var/lib/mailman/bin/arch test-list /var/lib/mailman/archives/private/test-list.mbox/test-list.mbox
---


Step 5:
=======
Login into the webfrontend on srv2 and change the Domain in the
General options.

Step 6:
=======
Now you should sent a testmail and take a close look at the configuration so
that everything fits your needs :)
Under normal conditions everything should be fine and you can delete
the old mailinglist :)

by Sven Hoexter <sven@timegate.de>