Mailing List Archive

Moving a queue from server to server
Hi, folks,

We've got several Exim servers in our data center. One is a quarantine
box which accepts mail with certain spam headers set from our inbound
gateway and freezes them; if one of those pieces of mail is needed, I
unfreeze it and send it back to the inbound gateway, spam header removed
and on its way to the outbound gateway. All of which is fine.

Now I'm replacing that box with a newer one and wondering how to move
the queue of frozen mail from the old machine to the new--or if I'm better
off just waiting till it all expires.

What would you do?

Thanks,

John A

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Re: Moving a queue from server to server [ In reply to ]
On 14/07/2020 18:57, Johnnie W Adams via Exim-users wrote:
> Now I'm replacing that box with a newer one and wondering how to move
> the queue of frozen mail from the old machine to the new--or if I'm better
> off just waiting till it all expires.


As to how: just copy the files. And delete the old ones. Preferably
having ensured the daemon on the old machine is not running.

I'm not answering the "whether to"; that's policy.
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Cheers,
Jeremy

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Re: Moving a queue from server to server [ In reply to ]
On 2020-07-15 at 10:02 +0100, Jeremy Harris via Exim-users wrote:
> On 14/07/2020 18:57, Johnnie W Adams via Exim-users wrote:
> > Now I'm replacing that box with a newer one and wondering how to move
> > the queue of frozen mail from the old machine to the new--or if I'm better
> > off just waiting till it all expires.
>
>
> As to how: just copy the files. And delete the old ones. Preferably
> having ensured the daemon on the old machine is not running.
>
> I'm not answering the "whether to"; that's policy.

Be sure to transfer the -D files before the -H files; probably in order
"-D", "-J", "-H".

But otherwise, yes.

If you want to transfer them in one batch, then make sure the daemon on
the _receiving_ side is shut down first too. Basically, Exim treats the
-H headers file as its control file. If it's present, a queue-runner
will try to route/deliver etc and then get upset if -D is missing. If
-D is present without -H then that's just new mail coming in and a
queue-runner will just skip to the next item. Meanwhile -J are the
journals, if you've enabled that for your Exim.

So:
1. shut down old Exim
2. either shutdown new Exim temporarily and sync all files then start
new Exim back up, OR:
3. Sync the -D files
4. Sync the -J files if any
5. Sync the -H files

-Phil, hoping I haven't gotten this all backwards, going just from
memory.

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Re: Moving a queue from server to server [ In reply to ]
On Wed, Jul 15, 2020 at 12:03:09PM -0400, Phil Pennock via Exim-users wrote:

> > As to how: just copy the files. And delete the old ones. Preferably
> > having ensured the daemon on the old machine is not running.
> >
> > I'm not answering the "whether to"; that's policy.
>
> Be sure to transfer the -D files before the -H files; probably in order
> "-D", "-J", "-H".

Don't know how well the advice traslates to Exim, but on the Postfix
users list the standard advice for moving queued mail to a new server is
to configure the new server as a smarthost relay on the old, and just
transfer the queued mail via SMTP! (This may involve also configuring
the old server to not treat any domains as "local").

FWIW, moving queue files is also possible, but SMTP transfer is
preferred.

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Viktor.

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