I need to move my MiaB on Ubuntu 18 to the same server after upgrading it to Ubuntu 22. I don’t feel comfortable doing it and am nervous on screwing something up. Anyone comfortable with the process and willing to be in a chat session to cheerlead me through it? I assume I will use the additional hard drive in the device to move the saved stuff through the process.
Anyone game?
Thanks for considering.
Keith.
Keith - Im confused. Is the box running on VPS or on a VM inside the Mac?
Explain the hard drive thing a bit more.
I might be able to help you as well.
Ditto. @Keith_Rettig
I think you are just referring to where you’ll download your data, but since your comment is so ambiguous it should be clarified.
Honestly, in this situation, assuming you are using a VPS, I would spin up a second vps temporarily as rsync’ing the data between the two VPS will be much more time efficient than downloading and uploading in 95% of situations.
It is a System76 small form server running Ubuntu 18.x (I keep it up-to-date). There is a second hard drive in the device. Runs in my rack in a data center. I am a hard-core Mac user, so just a bit nervous about moving the right files for MiaB to the hard drive before I do the Ubuntu 22 upgrade. I have been running MiaB for about 12 domains for the last few years, so I am not a complete idiot with Ubuntu; just mostly nervous. Hence why I want a cheerleader by my side while doing it.
If it were a VM, yes this is the best strategy. I have a second MiaB server (also a System76 server) but I procrastinated enough on setting it up that I just started with Ubuntu 22.
So, my advice is this … spin up a VPS somewhere, and do the restore to it. Once you see that it works, and work out any bugs with the process, you can rebuild your System76 and do it for real.
Fine enough advice; I have another System76 server I can use. However, I am not so sure I know enough of what all the steps I would need to take to copy all the right files to the other server (there is 18 months worth of emails on the MiaB now). This is also why it would be nice to have a cheerleader
by my side.
Hey, If you want to pay for an hour of my time, I will be glad to help you.
I hope you use Discord though as the MiaB Slack has become unusable for me.
But first, I don’t want to hold your hand completely. You need to read, then reread this:
What version of MiaB are you running now?
I’m not that familiar with “system76” although this just seems like a dedicated server/workstaion. Is this in your house or business?
I host my own MiaB on VMware ESXi (free) running on HPE DL360 G10 Server on Fibre Channel storage. So dont get me wrong its not that I can’t help.
I think running this on physical hardware makes your situation more complicated.
So am I correct? You’re basically installed natively on a server/desktop/workstation with a secondary drive mounted as /home/user-data maybe?
So you are going to blow away your operating system drives and re-install ubuntu 22.04LTS on it, then re-mount your secondary drive as /home/user-data/ ?
Then run the installer script and hope it installs everything and patch/fixes everything up… ??
It can be done I think fundamentally most people work with virtualized systems. This gives them the ability to have both the old and new system up and running at the same time and be able to copy files, compare things, etc.
I run a separate data disk within vmware for /home/user-data as well and mount it so its not all that different from my setup, but I dont do that as a strategy for moving to a new server (although I’m sure it would work). I do it because I can keep the OS virtual disk on SSD and user-data on HDD. (user-data) tends to be large and Enterprise SSD is expensive.
How does system76 work? This platform isn’t being hosted for you right… its in your home or business. If it is hosted for you, I assume they give you some kind of iLO / IPMI / chassis access?
If not I’m not sure who will be “installing the OS for you” how do you plan on someone doing this remotely? Walking you though this step by step via FaceTime? How do you KNOW for a fact you have selected the right disk to “pull” so it doesnt get overwritten?
Ever consider running a hypervisor on the box?
if you have another system76 box, install ubuntu 22.04LTS on it and either move the backup file and restore using duplicity or
basically what I’ve done in the past is something like this:
tar -czvf user-data.tar.gz /home/user-data/
Then scp that file to the new server.
scp user-data.tar.gz root@1.1.1.1:/home/
Where 1.1.1.1 is your ip address of the new box
Then decompress it with
tar -xvf user-data.tar.gz
If you need to move it around because you decompressed it in the wrong spot you can always do a
mv /user-data/ /home/user-data
then just run the installer, you’ll want to use the exact same “box name” as you had before, and the same master email address. once you log in with that after setup is complete you will notice all the other usernames are there, aliases, domains, etc. Mail for the master email (and other email addresses) will be there also…
curl -s https://mailinabox.email/setup.sh | sudo bash
You could try the maintenance guide way or the above here and see what you get on your secondary system76 box.
Note: the above is the “unofficial way of doing it” the maintenance guide way is the “correct / supported way” of doing it – although Ill argue that there is no real support for any of it – so do what you feel is more comfortable.
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thanks for this. I will be doing this when I get back from my eclipse trip.
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