Topic: How do I migrate configuration settings?

[darkgumby]

How do I migrate configuration settings from one machine to another?

I want to create a fail over server.
I have the primary server and fail over machine on the same network. I want to be able to copy the files and directories that contain the user, group, and ibay settings from the primary machine to the secondary, essentially cloning the machine.

I assume that if I copy /etc and /home from the primary to the secondary I've cloned the machine. The problem with this plan is I'll also copy the IP, hostname, and PDC workgroup name. After that I'd have network conflicts and users trying to log into the wrong PDC.
I want a near copy, not an exact copy for the fail over machine.

Initailly I only want to duplicate the configuration for users, groups, ibays, and user home directories from the primary server to the fail-over machine.
I'll work out copying the files stored in ibays and user home directories later.

I am familiar with Samba and rsync so I don't need help with the details, I just need to know which files and dirs to copy.

My plan is to do this with a cronned script that will duplicate the settings from the primary to the secondary on a regular basis. After I have the working then I will copy ibay and user home directory files across.

[bobk]

Take a look at the High Availability HowTo http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/smeserver/contribs/star/mitel/contrib/Linux-HA/SME%20High%20Availability%20How-To.html

The HowTo it pretty old and there are newer versions of the software available but it is a good start if you want to try and automate the cloning process.

There is also a HowTo using rsync here: http://tehvand.com/tehvand/index.cgi?opt=SME_Server&project=rsyncmigrate

[darkgumby]

The rsync howto was just what I was looking for.

I'm going to play around with the HA option and maybe try that in the future.