Topic: moving users from server to server

[bilvich]

I have read through the forum and the instructions but have either missed or could not find the information i need. what i need to do is move one user from one server at a remote location to another server at a second location. I need to move not only is userhome, but also ibays and email.
The information in the ibays and user home directory is fairly easy, what i can't figure out is how to move the email and the folders under the email. They are using horde for their email. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Bill

[Stefano]

you can use imapsync, it worked fine for me in the past

[cactus]

Couldn't you just make a backup and restore that on the remote machine?

[sal1504]

cactus

the problem is the servers are both production servers and have several exsisting users on it. Unless there is a way to backup a single user and move it i don't see this as an option, it would be great if there was a way to do this.

bill

[janet]

bilvich

The user mail folders are in the user home folder, so if you copy and move that, then you have moved all the mail !

For tips on manually moving data see
http://wiki.contribs.org/Backup_server_config

You should tar the ibays and user home folders as this will retain correct permissions and ownership on the new server when untared.
Just manually create the user on the new server (only one user so easy enough to do), then copy the tarred files using ssh and then untar them.

[bilvich]

cactus

what you are saying, i think is, to take a backup and do a selective restore of the user's homefile and ibays? I don't know why that didn't occur to me. can only blame old age.

Mary

Thanks for the info if what cactus proposes doesn't work i'll try yours.

thanks for the quick response.

Bill

[Igi2003]

Move Userfiles is easy. Make an Archive of the users directory using tar.
"tar czvpf user.name.tgz /home/e-smith/files/users/user.name/*". So you have all data in this archive.
Then create the same Username on the new Server. Copy "user.name.tgz" to new server and decompress the archive with "tar xzvpf user.name.tgz". Do this for everyone User you will transfer.
So you can move single or multiple userfiles to another server. If PDC is working, the serverprofile is in "/home/e-smith/files/samba/profiles/user.name/".

Igi

[bilvich]

thanks everyone

got the email moved with all your help. i did run into a problem though. i don't know if this is related to the move or not. In order to move the client data i wanted to make sure that server one was the same as server two so i upgraded the os to 7.5.1 on both machines. when i did this i apparently lost the Horde address book. I can see the email addresses in the address book when i go to create a new email, but all information in the address book itself, name, address, city, etc. are gone. I noticed on the forum that this has been an issue in the past with Horde updates. Is there anyway that this can be retrieved. I not sure were this data is stored so I can check it to make sure it is stilll there or if it is lost and the best way to retrieve it if it is still there. I tried some of the solutions in bugzilla but none fixed the problem.

Some other information that will help, when i checked the first server it now has the same problem. I can see the email and folders but the address book is gone, so I think it has something to do with upgrading from version 7.4 to 7.5.1. Is this a known problem or should i put it in the bugtracker.

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Bill

[Smitro]

Horde stores all its data for the address book in MySQL. So bringing across the user folder would miss this data. You'd probably have to move the correct sections of the database across too to make it a clean transition.

[bilvich]

smitro

Thanks for the reply. After doing some research on the two different servers I found one was running Turba and the other IMP. I don't know if this is a change in SMEServer or if something didn't get installed. Anyway since there were only 60 addresses for this one person and I didn't want to have to change the addressbook for 72 users I manually inputted them into the turba program and all is good. I was very surprised to see the difference between the two servers.

bill

[CharlieBrady]

Thanks for the reply. After doing some research on the two different servers I found one was running Turba and the other IMP.

That's unlikely. They should both have both turba and imp.