Moving to another server

If you're upgrading and moving to another server at the same time, we recommend you first to stop the operational service, move your data and then upgrade Sympa on the new server. This will guarantee that Sympa upgrade procedures have been applied on the data.

The migration process requires that you move the following data from the old server to the new one:

The user database. For example if you are using MySQL, you can probably just stop mysqld and copy the database directory to the new server.
The $EXPLDIR directory that contains list configurations.
The $SPOOLDIR directory that contains the spools.
The sympa.conf, and the file wwsympa.conf if it exists.

Note:

If you plan to upgrade to Sympa 6.2.60 or earlier, make sure that the cookie parameter in sympa.conf won't be changed. Some distributions randomly initialize this parameter in new installation.

When upgrading Sympa on a new server, take care that you start with the same value of this parameter, otherwise you might have problems, such as breakage of all passwords for web interface.

The note above won't be applied to Sympa 6.2.62 or later which no longer uses the cookie parameter.
The $SYSCONFDIR directory that contains customized scenarios, templates and so on.
The $ARCDIR directory that contains archives.

In some cases, you may want to install the new version and run it for a few days before switching the existing service to the new Sympa server. In this case, perform a new installation with an empty database and play with it.

When you decide to move the existing service to the new server:

Stop all sympa processes on both servers.
Transfer all the data described in above from the old server.
Check "Upgrading notes" and make appropriate manual adjustments as necessity.
Edit the data_structure.version file on the new server to change the version value to reflect the old number.
Run "sympa.pl --upgrade". It will upgrade the database structure and several configuration files according to the hop you do.