Hi all, I'd like to announce a little side-project I've been working on. It is called "BlueOnyx General Migration Utility" (or short: "GMU").
The end-goal is to provide migration paths from several non-BlueOnyx servers to BlueOnyx. So we're looking towards eventually providing the ability to migrate from other solutions (think "Plesk" or "cPanel") to BlueOnyx. But also from general Linux/Unix/BSD hosting solutions as long as they meet certain criteria. Such as Email via Sendmail, traditional *NIX user accounting via passwd and/or PAM and use the Apache webserver. The first step of this project has been completed and we now have a functional solution that allows a clear, precise and working migration path from Verio ControlPanel (on both FreeBSD and CentOS 4) to BlueOnyx 5209R. GMU comes in two components: An export script that is run on the server from which you want to migrate. The exporter for the Verio CP servers is ready. Scripts custom tailored to handle other CP's will be provided later on. If you do have a server from which you eventually want to migrate and are willing to let me take a peek to create an export script, then please let me know. The exporter parses the configuration files and system settings on the export server and generates and XML with the configuration of Vsites, User accounts, autoresponders, forwardings, email aliases and such. It also generates the Tarballs that contain the Vsite directories, Email data such as mbox or MailDir and all data from the user accounts. The second part is the importer, which is a general script that is supposed to handle all exports that conform to the expected standard. This import script is named /usr/sausalito/sbin/blueonyx-import.pl and is provided by the RPM "blueonyx-gmu" on 5209R. This script parses the XML and can either restore just the configuration of Vsites and Users, or can restore Resellers, Vsites, Users and all their data. This also handles conversion from Maildir to mbox format, quota adjustments and making sure the correct PHP settings are applied. The full documentation of GMU is available in the BlueOnyx Wiki and it includes download locations, installation- and usage instructions: http://wiki.blueonyx.it/info/devel/gmu Certainly someone will ask: "Will GMU eventually replace CMU?" The answer to that is: It will supplement it. We have no plans to retire CMU and CMU with remain a fully supported migration path between BlueOnyx servers (and also from Cobalt and BlueQuartz boxes to BlueOnyx). However: We all do know that CMU is a clunker. A precioussssss one at best and although it gets the job done? It could do it better. GMU will eventually be able to perform BlueOnyx to BlueOnyx migrations as well. And I expect that it will handle BlueOnyx to BlueOnyx migrations about 8-10x faster than CMU and with a lot less issues. One of the reasons for the slowness of CMU is the usage of the Archive::Tar Perl module for packing and unpacking of Tarballs. I first used this in GMU as well and it was as slow as CMU. Then I found a way that's a lot more efficient and with that it just wheezed through packing and unpacking as if on steroids. Porting that back to CMU is not feasible, so we will rather extend GMU to deal with BlueOnyx to BlueOnyx migrations as well. This will then also be able to migrate DNS records on the fly (without extra roundtrips) and we will have the ability to migrate settings for system services and application settings (like the settings of the AV-SPAM or other third party applications). -- With best regards Michael Stauber _______________________________________________ Blueonyx mailing list Blueonyx@mail.blueonyx.it http://mail.blueonyx.it/mailman/listinfo/blueonyx