Floods of Emails Coming In To /var/spool/mqueue

[Les Mikesell]

Robert L Cochran wrote:
> Les Mikesell wrote:
>> Robert L Cochran wrote:
>>
>>> I guess I'm going to have to figure out how to do an in-place 
>>> replacement of the operating system. I can install a second physical 
>>> hard drive, install Fedora 8 or CentOS 5 on that, and then start 
>>> migrating data from the FC 2 system to the new one over several days 
>>> time. I can use grub to switch between the two.
>>
>> That can work with a certain amount of downtime while you install and 
>> juggle things although it's a lot easier if you can build the 
>> replacement on a different machine and swap it (or the drives) into 
>> place when everything works with a final rsync of data at the last 
>> minute.  If you plan to keep this running for years without 
>> reinstalling, Centos would be a better choice, since you can expect 
>> 'yum update' to supply security fixes for 7 years.
>>
> Using a separate machine might be possible, yes. You are suggesting the 
> that I rsync specific data directories to the new drive -- I've never 
> done that before, but there is a first time for everything.

Yes, I like to do a clean install of the new distribution with all the 
matching programs using a different hostname/ip address, do an initial 
copy of the data that needs to be kept using rsync, tweak all the 
configs and test as much as possible. Then when it is ready, shut down 
the services on the old box, rsync again to update any changed data, 
then swap the hostnames and addresses and reboot.  You do have to 
somewhat careful about cron jobs, the outgoing sendmail queue, etc, 
where you don't want to duplicate operations when both are running and 
you might have to clear the adjacent router cache to make the IP switch 
work quickly.  The advantage of this approach is that you have access to 
all the config details on the old system, even ones best access through 
a GUI, while working on the new one, and you don't have to panic if 
something doesn't work - you can always turn the old one back up.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com