[Mailman-Users] Restoring lists on newer version

[Mark Sapiro]

Ivan Van Laningham wrote:
>
>What's the best procedure to restore my lists?  I've got a dozen, but 
>only three have significant traffic.  Do I copy the backups to the 
>proper location and then make the lists with Plesk, or do I make the 
>lists first and then copy the data in?


Neither. You just copy the lists/<listname>/ and
archives/private/<listname>*/ directories to the proper locations. If
there are held messages, you can copy the data/heldmsg* files too, but
may not want those.

After copying those things, the lists and archives will be functional
in the web interface. If the MTA uses aliases automatically created by
Mailman as with Postfix, run bin/genaliases after copying which will
regenerate aliases including those for the copied lists. If the MTA
uses some kind of programatic routing for Mailman as with Exim,
nothing is required.

If Plesk makes aliases in some other way, You may have to do them
manually.


>I also have significant customization of the admin and info pages; can I 
>rescue that without too much trouble?  Or do I have to transfer all the 
>custom modifications by hand?  (It's all appearance, by the way; nothing 
>affects Mailman operation in any way.)


Do you mean customization of templates or actual modifications to the
code in admin.py (or the Mailman/Gui/ modules) and listinfo.py.

If you've modified templates per list, the lists/<listname>/<language>/
directory has already been copied per the above copy of
lists/<listname>/, so that is done. If you've modified templates per
host or the site, just copy the templates/<host_name>/<language>/
and/or templates/site/<language>/ directories.

If you modified templates in templates/<language>/, that is not good.
Copy the modified templates to templates/site/<language>/. See
<http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq04.048.htp>

If you've modified admin.py, the Gui/ modules, and/or listinfo.py,
ideally you kept a patch (diff) of your modifications (or you kept the
unmodified versions and can make a diff now), and you can apply that
to the new code. If you didn't do that, and all you have is modified
code, you could download the base 2.1.5 modules from
<http://mailman.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/mailman/tags/Release_2_1_5/mailman/Mailman/>
and either diff those against the Plesk 2.1.9 modules to make a patch
for your modules or diff your modules against the 2.1.5 base to make a
patch for the Plesk modules.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net>        The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan