...which I should have thought of--workstation backup/restore works as a recovery/upgrade mechanism, but the console backup is simpler.
@Mirfster, the quickest/simplest upgrade path would be to use the console menu to back up to USB device, then install SME 9.1 64-bit. When you reboot, the first thing it will ask is whether you want to restore from a backup. Answer yes, and it will restore from the backup on your USB drive. You'd still need to deal manually with any contribs (which you'd need to do in any event).
sure, but it's not a viable solution if your server has a big amount of data (emails) and you backup it without prior stopping related services..
if the backup routine needs 4 hours to run, all the emails managed in that time window will not be part of the backup.
solution 1)
stop all email's related services (qmail, qpsmtp, sqpsmtpd, fetchmail) and in general all the services that can modify your files (samba), backup, shutdown the server, install SME9 64, restore..
this is doable if you accept to have a (quite) long downtime.. but sometimes you can't
solution 2)
using a custom script with rsync over ssh, storing backup on a temporary server.. you can run that script many times, just to do the real backup (first time) and to keep the data in sync (from second time onwards)
when you decide to restore your data, you've to stop all the services (see above), do a sync (very quick), shutdown the server, install SME9 64, re-sync data and so on..
the trick, with this approach, is to restore all the configuration and let the server start working, and then sync the content
this approach works perfectly if you plan to migrate your hw too (works like affa, but don't need to install anything)