upgrading 10.04 based mail server

Simos Xenitellis simos.lists at googlemail.com
Tue May 9 06:20:20 UTC 2017


On Mon, May 8, 2017 at 3:14 PM, Kristian Rink <kawazu428 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Folks;
>
> I'm again looking into finally upgrading our Ubuntu 10.04 based e-mail
> server. Tried this several times in the past and (repeatedly) failed;
> that's why I gave up on it yet in the end we need to get away from
> 10.04 at some point.
>
> Here's my setup: The VM includes cyrus imapd, postfix, a local mysql
> database hosting virtual aliases all along with postfix-mysql and local
> user accounts. Obviously, this system is critical for our business,
> transports > 5k messages per day and has a spool of roughly 500g of
> mail in shared IMAP boxes, as well as a modestly complex set of cyrus
> ACLs controlling access to the IMAP boxes. Completely setting this
> beast up all anew is tough and risky and as it generally works, I just
> wanted to do a step-by-step dist-upgrade of the base system to the most
> recent version.
>
> Unfortunately, this doesn't really work well due to a couple of changes
> especially in cyrus-imapd. Has anyone successfully dist-upgraded such a
> setup and can share some hints, tips, ideas with me on how to get it
> done well?
>

It looks like a complex set up, so when upgrading it, you would need
to partition the task in small pieces,
and test that each upgraded piece works. All these on a test server,
and make sure that all work before flipping the switch.
For example, you can test first that the mail spool works with a newer
imapd to read email.

It will probably help you to test using LXD containers,
https://stgraber.org/2016/03/11/lxd-2-0-blog-post-series-012/
There are images in there for 12.04 (still present), 14.04, 16.04,
16.10, 17.04, so you can pick and choose
which version to launch, and it gets launched in a few seconds.
You can take snapshots of the current state of the container, so when
something newer fails,
you can fallback to the previous good state and continue trying other options.

Simos



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