Qmail Support Forum

admin · Site Admin Joined: 21 Jun 2005 Posts: 210

Does anyone have any advice on moving to a Qmail server from an existing server? In particular, the user’s email on the existing server.

We are planning to use Qmail for a client who is an ISP that has decided to bring their email operation in house (it has been outsourced). We have know all of the user’s email addresses, unfortunately because their current provider encrypts the password we don’t’ have those. However, we are using vpopmail with the –enable-password-learning on.

What I’d like to do, is make the change to the DNS server so they will begin hitting the new mailserver. However, immediately upon their first connection I’d like to fire off a process that connects to the existing server, and fetches all the email that is there. This will solve two problems: 1) user’s will not miss any mail, and 2) will give us a ‘grace period’ for the DNS change to propogate.

Is this a bad idea? Or does anyone have any better suggestions (or reading material).

Thanks in advance.

kw

admin · Site Admin Joined: 21 Jun 2005 Posts: 210

This is how we just accomplished a similar move:
1. Set up qmail server with new virtual domain
2. Set up users email account on the mail server
3. Sent out emails to users informing them of the change, when it would be
and what their new settings would be. Also told them to make sure to do a
send/receive before they changed their settings.
4. Had ISP change the 10 level mx record to us
5. Had ISP change the 20 level mx record to them (just in case)
6. Used fetchmail to get mail to users new accounts (scripted process) After
the procedure was over in case there was any mail left at the ISP.
7. We didn't lose any mail

Hope this helps

admin · Site Admin Joined: 21 Jun 2005 Posts: 210

the new mail server uses a man-in-the-middle type of attack where the user
authenticates against the new server that caches these credentials and
passes them on to the remote server. The server in the middle can then
issue fetchmail commands to pull the user's mail from the remote server.

Whether this works or not depends on the protocols being used to transport
mail.